“I ain’t got nothin’ to repent of exceptin’ pullin’ three or four of them bum chasers. The stewards couldn’t get nothin’ on me at that.” “The Judges up there know it all.” “Know everything? Then, say, what chanst has a guy got?” As a religious prospect the case was too hard, so I telephoned the little rector and gave it over to him. He called upon Jaundice several times, and the following week I went to the hospital again. Jaundice was weak but smiling. “Say,” he whispered hoarsely, “I got a chanst. That little man says that them Judges up there knows I was carryin’ too much weight to run true and that you can’t blame anyone for losin’ when he is handicapped out of it. I told him about pulling them chasers and lyin’ and stealin’, and he said that didn’t make no difference, that the Judges don’t set a guy down forever if he is sorry he done wrong.” He remained thinking for a time. “He didn’t have to tell me to be sorry,” he whispered. “Honest, I always was sorry when I pulled one of them bum chasers when he was trying. It wasn’t square to the horse. This is the softest bet I ever had,” he whispered. “I’m going to play it. Them’s good odds--a chanst to win all them things he told me about and only be sorry. It’s like writing your own ticket.” I found the little rector very thoughtful and amazed at this new manner of man he had discovered, and when he buried Jaundice the next week he got right down among us and talked about handicaps and weights, and keeping on trying all the time. He talked just as if he had been in the paddock half his life, and the last thing he said was: “If I were a bookie, I’d lay odds that Jaundice cashes that last bet.” TOUTIN’ MISTAH FOX TOUTIN’ MISTAH FOX Prosias Trimble’s protuberant lower lip drooped dejectedly, his eyes shifted in a scowl until the pupils were dots in the corners of expanses of white, his russet shoes, rapier-pointed and uncomfortably overcrowded with feet, dragged laggingly along the marble floor of the St. Charles Hotel Turkish baths. He went about his task of distributing towels with the air of one who has suffered great wrong. In the private rooms and on cots ranged in the dormitory, white men snored, gurgled, choked, strangled. The sounds of sixty fat men snoring in sixty keys filled the rooms. Even the snore of the man in room six, which was a combination of shifting gears, a cut-out muffler, and a slipping clutch, passed unheard by “Pro.” Even the cheery whistle of his fellow rubber was unnoticed. The world was a place of darkness, and Pro’s mood was two shades darker than his skin, the color scheme of which was that of the ace of spades.