Ikey with all his faults was an admirable citizen, beloved in his own country and not without cause, as Universities and Public Bodies innumerable could testify.  For twenty-five years it had been known that he had been trying for a goal.  At last he had won it—­and then John Bull!...  Ya-as....  American horse—­American owner—­American jockey!  Sure....

Brother Jonathon turned in his lips.  He did not blame John Bull; he was not angry or resentful.  But he was determined and above all ironical.

Then, when feeling was at its highest, the Mocassin Song had suddenly taken America by storm.  Sung first in the Empire Theatre on the Broadway by Abe Gideon, the bark-blocks comedian, ten days after the mare’s victory and defeat, it had raged through the land like a prairie fire.  Cattle-men on the Mexican Border sung it in the chaparral, and the lumber-camps by the Great Lakes echoed it at night.  Gramophones carried it up and down the Continent from Oyster Bay to Vancouver, and from Frisco to New Orleans.  Every street-boy whistled it, every organ ground it out.  It hummed in the heads of Senators in Congress, and teased saints upon their knees.  It carried the name and fame of Mocassin to thousands of pious homes in which horses and racing had been anathema in the past, so that Ministers from Salem and Quaker ladies from Philadelphia could tell you over tea cups sotto voce something of the romantic story of the mare from the Cumberland.

And that was not all.

The Song, raging through the land like a bush-fire, dying down here only to burst out in fresh vehemence elsewhere, leapt even oceans in its tempestuous course.

The English sang it in their music-halls with fatuous self-complacency.  Indeed they, too, went Mocassin-mad, and the mare who had once already humbled the Old Country in the dust, and would again, became the idol of the British Empire.

In shop-windows, on boardings, stamped on the packet of cigarettes you bought, the picture of the mare was met, until her keen mouse-head, her drooping quarters and great fore-hand, had been impressed on the mind of the English Public as clearly as the features of Lord Kitchener.  Jonathon watched his brother across the Atlantic with cynical amusement.

Honest John Bull, now that he had something up against him that could beat his best, what did he do?  Admit defeat?  Not John!  If the mare won in the coming struggle he claimed her as his own with tears of unctuous joy.  If she was beaten—­well, what else did you expect?

America’s feeling in the matter was summed up in the famous cartoon that appeared at Christmas in Life, where Jonathon was seen shaking hands with John Bull, the mare in the background, and saying: 

“I’ll believe in you, John, but I’ll watch you all the same.”

* * * * *

“That’s God Almighty’s Mustang, Chukkers up,” said Old Mat.  “The Three J’s think they done it this time.  And to read the papers you’d guess they was right.  She’s a good mare, too—­I will say that for her; quick as a kitten and the heart of a lion.  You see her last year yourself at Aintree, sir!”