Then came a rush of hundreds to see the Suburban horses saddled. One by one, the candidates filed out to the track for their warming-up gallops--Boston, top-weight, favorite and winner of the Metropolitan, and second in the Brooklyn; Carley, winner of the Advance the season before; Catchall, the speedy Hastings mare; and all the rest--all save Kate Greenaway. Once, in a warming-up gallop, she had run away, and Faulkner would never take chances with her after that. So Tim walked her up and down by herself, thankful, yet ashamed, that somebody else was to ride her. Suddenly the stable foreman ran up. "Hi, you Tim," he shouted, "hustle over to the dressin' room an' git on yer duds. Skin along, now, no time to lose." Tim stood gaping. "Git a move on--git a move! My Gawd! You ain't got no time to lose. Ban's fell down an' sprained his ankle." Tim trudged over to the jockey's house, his eyes on the ground. Over in the paddock, Faulkner listened stubbornly to the foreman. "I tell you," the latter was saying, "the kid's lost his nerve. Ain't you seen it all along? He ain't took a chance sence his tumble. Why dontcher give the mount to Tyson or Biff Barry? They ain't neither of 'em got a mount." "Nothin' doin'," rejoined the trainer. "The kid knows the filly--brought her up, almost. He can ride, too, if he don't get in a tight place, an' that ain't likely. Tyson can't make the weight. B'sides, I told the Colonel I'd give the kid a chance. An'," he concluded, "this is it." "All right," said the foreman, "but you'll see. He's lost his nerve. Why, he got white eraoun' the gills when I tol' him." [Illustration: "HE SAT ON THE EDGE OF HIS COT, WITH THE BLANKET OVER HIS SHOULDERS, UNTIL DAYBREAK"] Tim had grown like a weed since he first saw Sheepshead Bay, but it was a slender, fragile figure that the trainer tossed into the chestnut filly's saddle when the bugle blew. "Now, kid," said Faulkner quietly, throwing one arm over the crupper, "you're third from the rail. You know the filly as well as I do. She's fit to the minute. She'll run in 2.03, if she ain't rushed in the first half. Hold yer place an' let the sprinters do their sprintin'. They'll come back. Keep her goin' her pace for a mile, an' if you have to ride her the last quarter, make her sweat for it. She's game fer a drive. They don't make 'em no gamer." The lad heard scarcely a word. He wasn't frightened. He was sullen, rebellious against--against everything. It was one more race to him--commonplace, perfunctory, tiresome. He was going to get through with it in the easiest way he could. He thought with relief of the wide spaces and easy turns of the great track. "Keep up yer nerve, kid," said Bud Noble, turning in his saddle and looking back at Tim as the field filed through the paddock gate.