THE KEY TO YESTERDAY



  A tall stranger, who had lost his companion
and host in the maelstrom of the betting shed,
had taken his stand near the angle where the
paddock grating meets the track fence. A
Derby crowd at Churchill Downs is a conges-
tion of humanity, and in the obvious impossi-
bility of finding his friend he could here at
least give his friend the opportunity of finding
him, since at this point were a few panels of
fence almost clear. As the two colts fought
out the final decisive furlongs, the black nose
stealing inch by inch along the bay neck, the
stranger's face wore an interest not altogether
that of the casual race-goer.  His shoulders
were thrown back, and his rather lean jaw angle
swept into an uncompromising firmness of chin
-just now uptilted.
  The man stood something like six feet of
clear-cut physical fitness. There was a declara-
tion in his breadth of shoulder and depth of
chest, in his slenderness of waist and thigh, of
a life spent only partly within walls, while the
free swing of torso might have intimated to
the expert observer that some of it had been
spent in the saddle.
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