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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Garrison's Finish, by W. B. M. Ferguson
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Garrison's Finish
+       A Romance of the Race-Course
+
+Author: W. B. M. Ferguson
+
+Release Date: March 31, 2006 [EBook #2989]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GARRISON'S FINISH ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Dagny; John Bickers
+
+
+
+
+
+GARRISON'S FINISH, A ROMANCE OF THE RACE-COURSE
+
+
+by W. B. M. Ferguson
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+A SHATTERED IDOL.
+
+As he made his way out of the paddock Garrison carefully tilted his
+bag of Durham into the curved rice-paper held between nicotine-stained
+finger and thumb, then deftly rolled his "smoke" with the thumb and
+forefinger, while tying the bag with practised right hand and even white
+teeth. Once his reputation had been as spotless as those teeth.
+
+He smiled cynically as he shouldered his way through the slowly moving
+crowd--that kaleidoscope of the humanities which congregate but do not
+blend; which coagulate wherever the trial of science, speed, and stamina
+serves as an excuse for putting fortune to the test.
+
+It was a cynical crowd, a quiet crowd, a sullen crowd. Those who had
+won, through sheer luck, bottled their joy until they could give it vent
+in a safer atmosphere--one not so resentful. For it had been a hard day
+for the field. The favorite beaten in the stretch, choked off, outside
+the money----
+
+Garrison gasped as the rushing simulacra of the Carter Handicap surged
+to his beating brain; that brain at bursting pressure. It had recorded
+so many things--recorded faithfully so many, many things he would give
+anything to forget.
+
+He was choking, smothering--smothering with shame, hopelessness,
+despair. He must get away; get away to breathe, to think; get away out
+of it all; get away anywhere--oblivion.
+
+To the jibes, the sneers flung at him, the innuendos, the open insults,
+and worst of all, the sad looks of those few friends who gave their
+friendship without conditions, he was not indifferent, though he seemed
+so. God knows how he felt it at all. And all the more so because he
+had once been so high. Now his fall was so low, so pitifully low; so
+contemptible, so complete.
+
+He knew what the action of the Jockey Club would be. The stewards would
+do only one thing. His license would be revoked. To-day had seen his
+finish. This, the ten-thousand dollar Carter Handicap, had seen his
+final slump to the bottom of the scale. Worse. It had seen him a pauper,
+ostracized; an unclean thing in the mouth of friend and foe alike. The
+sporting world was through with him at last. And when the sporting world
+is through--
+
+Again Garrison laughed harshly, puffing at his cigarette, dragging its
+fumes into his lungs in a fierce desire to finish his physical cataclysm
+with his moral. Yes, it had been his last chance. He, the popular idol,
+had been going lower and lower in the scale, but the sporting world had
+been loyal, as it always is to "class." He had been "class," and they
+had stuck to him.
+
+Then when he began to go back--No; worse. Not that. They said he had
+gone crooked. That was it. Crooked as Doyers Street, they said; throwing
+every race; standing in with his owner to trim the bookies, and they
+couldn't stand for that. Sport was sport. But they had been loyal. They
+had warned, implored, begged. What was the use soaking a pile by dirty
+work? Why not ride straight--ride as he could, as he did, as it had been
+bred in him to? Any money, any honor was his. Instead--
+
+Garrison, stung to madness by retrospect, humped his way through the
+crowd at the gates of the Aqueduct. There was not a friendly eye in that
+crowd. He stuffed his ears with indifference. He would not bear their
+remarks as they recognized him. He summoned all his nerve to look them
+in the face unflinchingly--that nerve that had been frayed to ribbons.
+
+And then he heard quick footsteps behind him; a hand was laid heavily
+on his shoulder, and he was twisted about like a chip. It was his stable
+owner, his face flushed with passion and drink. Waterbury was stingy of
+cash, but not of words.
+
+"I've looked for you," he whipped out venomously, his large hands
+ravenous for something to rend. "Now I've caught you. Who was in with
+you on that dirty deal? Answer, you cur! Spit it out before the crowd.
+Was it me? Was it me?" he reiterated in a frenzy, taking a step forward
+for each word, his bad grammar coming equally to the fore.
+
+The crowd surged back. Owner and jockey were face to face. "When thieves
+fall out!" they thought; and they waited for the fun. Something was due
+them. It came in a flash. Waterbury shot out his big fist, and little
+Garrison thumped on the turf with a bang, a thin streamer of blood
+threading its way down his gray-white face.
+
+"You miserable little whelp!" howled his owner. "You've dishonored me.
+You threw that race, damn you! That's what I get for giving you a chance
+when you couldn't get a mount anywhere." His long pent-up venom was
+unleashed. "You threw it. You've tried to make me party to your dirty
+work--me, me, me!"--he thumped his heaving chest. "But you can't heap
+your filth on me. I'm done with you. You're a thief, a cur--"
+
+"Hold on," cut in Garrison. He had risen slowly, and was dabbing
+furtively at his nose with a silk red-and-blue handkerchief--the
+Waterbury colors.
+
+"Just a minute," he added, striving to keep his voice from sliding the
+scale. He was horribly calm, but his gray eyes were quivering as was his
+lip. "I didn't throw it. I--I didn't throw it. I was sick. I--I've been
+sick. I--I----" Then, for he was only a boy with a man's burdens, his
+lip began to quiver pitifully; his voice shrilled out and his words came
+tumbling forth like lava; striving to make up by passion and reiteration
+what they lacked in logic and coherency. "I'm not a thief. I'm not. I'm
+honest. I don't know how it happened. Everything became a blur in the
+stretch. You--you've called me a liar, Mr. Waterbury. You've called me
+a thief. You struck me. I know you can lick me," he shrilled. "I'm
+dishonored--down and out. I know you can lick me, but, by the Lord,
+you'll do it here and now! You'll fight me. I don't like you. I never
+liked you. I don't like your face. I don't like your hat, and
+here's your damn colors in your face." He fiercely crumpled the silk
+handkerchief and pushed it swiftly into Waterbury's glowering eye.
+
+Instantly there was a mix-up. The crowd was blood-hungry. They had paid
+for sport of some kind. There would be no crooked work in this deal.
+Lustfully they watched. Then the inequality of the boy and the man was
+at length borne in on them, and it roused their stagnant sense of fair
+play.
+
+Garrison, a small hell let loose, had risen from the turf for the third
+time! His face was a smear of blood, venom, and all the bandit passions.
+Waterbury, the gentleman in him soaked by the taint of a foisted
+dishonor and his fighting blood roused, waited with clenched fists. As
+Garrison hopped in for the fourth time, the older man feinted quickly,
+and then swung right and left savagely.
+
+The blows were caught on the thick arm of a tan box-coat. A big hand
+was placed over Waterbury's face and he was given a shove backward. He
+staggered for a ridiculously long time, and then, after an unnecessary
+waste of minutes, sat down. The tan overcoat stood over him. It was
+Jimmy Drake, and the chameleonlike crowd applauded.
+
+Jimmy was a popular book-maker with educated fists. The crowd surged
+closer. It looked as if the fight might change from bantam-heavy to
+heavy-heavy. And the odds were on Drake.
+
+"If yeh want to fight kids," said the book-maker, in his slow, drawling
+voice, "wait till they're grown up. Mebbe then yeh'll change your mind."
+
+Waterbury was on his feet now. He let loose some vitriolic verbiage,
+using Drake as the objective-point. He told him to mind his own
+business, or that he would make it hot for him. He told him that
+Garrison was a thief and cur; and that he would have no book-maker and
+tout--
+
+"Hold on," said Drake. "You're gettin' too flossy right there. When
+you call me a tout you're exceedin' the speed limit." He had an
+uncomfortable steady blue eye and a face like a snow-shovel. "I stepped
+in here not to argue morals, but to see fair play. If Billy Garrison's
+done dirt--and I admit it looks close like it--I'll bet that your
+stable, either trainer or owner, shared the mud-pie, all right--"
+
+"I've stood enough of those slurs," cried Waterbury, in a frenzy. "You
+lie."
+
+Instantly Drake's large face stiffened like cement, and his overcoat was
+on the ground.
+
+"That's a fighting word where I come from," he said grimly.
+
+But before Drake could square the insult a crowd of Waterbury's
+friends swirled up in an auto, and half a dozen peacemakers, mutual
+acquaintances, together with two somnambulistic policemen, managed
+to preserve the remains of the badly shattered peace. Drake sullenly
+resumed his coat, and Waterbury was driven off, leaving a back draft
+of impolite adjectives and vague threats against everybody. The crowd
+drifted away. It was a fitting finish for the scotched Carter Handicap.
+
+Meanwhile, Garrison, taking advantage of the switching of the lime-light
+from himself to Drake, had dodged to oblivion in the crowd.
+
+"I guess I don't forget Jimmy Drake," he mused grimly to himself. "He's
+straight cotton. The only one who didn't give me the double-cross out
+and out. Bud, Bud!" he declared to himself, "this is sure the wind-up.
+You've struck bed-rock and the tide's coming in--hard. You're all to
+the weeds. Buck up, buck up," he growled savagely, in fierce contempt.
+"What're you dripping about?" He had caught a tear burning its way to
+his eyes--eyes that had never blinked under Waterbury's savage blows.
+"What if you are ruled off! What if you are called a liar and crook;
+thrown the game to soak a pile? What if you couldn't get a clotheshorse
+to run in a potato-race? Buck up, buck up, and plug your cotton pipe.
+They say you're a crook. Well, be one. Show 'em you don't care a damn.
+You're down and out, anyway. What's honesty, anyway, but whether you got
+the goods or ain't? Shake the bunch. Get out before you're kicked out.
+Open a pool-room like all the has-beens and trim the suckers right,
+left, and down the middle. Money's the whole thing. Get it. Don't mind
+how you do, but just get it. You'll be honest enough for ten men then.
+Anyway, there's no one cares a curse how you pan out--"
+
+He stopped, and his face slowly relaxed. The hard, vindictive look
+slowly faded from his narrowed eyes.
+
+"Sis," he said softly. "Sis--I was going without saying good-by. Forgive
+me."
+
+He swung on his heel, and with hunched shoulders made his way back
+to Aqueduct. Waterbury's training-quarters were adjacent, and, after
+lurking furtively about like some hunted animal, Garrison summoned all
+his nerve and walked boldly in.
+
+The only stable-boy about was one with a twisted mouth and flaming
+red hair, which he was always curling; a remarkably thin youth he was,
+addicted to green sweaters and sentimental songs. He was singing one now
+in a key entirely original with himself. "Red's" characteristic was that
+when happy he wore a face like a tomb-stone. When sad, the sentimental
+songs were always in evidence.
+
+"Hello, Red!" said Garrison gruffly. He had been Red's idol once. He was
+quite prepared now, however, to see the other side of the curtain. He
+was no longer an idol to any one.
+
+"Hello!" returned Red non-committally.
+
+"Where's Crimmins?"
+
+"In there." Red nodded to the left where were situated the stalls.
+"Gettin' Sis ready for the Belmont opening."
+
+"Riding for him now?"
+
+"Yeh. Promised a mount in th' next run-off. 'Bout time, I guess."
+
+There was silence. Garrison pictured to himself the time when he had won
+his first mount. How long ago that was! Time is reckoned by events, not
+years. How glorious the future had seemed! He slowly seated himself on a
+box by the side of Red and laid a hand on the other's thin leg.
+
+"Kid," he said, and his voice quivered, "you know I wish you luck. It's
+a great game--the greatest game in the world, if you play it right." He
+blundered to silence as his own condition surged over him.
+
+Red was knocking out his shabby heels against the box in an agony of
+confusion. Then he grew emboldened by the other's dejected mien. "No,
+I'd never throw no race," he said judicially. "It don't pay--"
+
+"Red," broke in Garrison harshly, "you don't believe I threw that race?
+Honest, I'm square. Why, I was up on Sis--Sis whom I love, Red--honest,
+I was sure of the race. Dead sure. I hadn't much money, but I played
+every cent I had on her. I lost more than any one. I lost--everything.
+See," he ran on feverishly, glad of the opportunity to vindicate
+himself, if only to a stable-boy. "I guess the stewards will let the
+race stand, even if Waterbury does kick. Rogue won square enough."
+
+"Yeh, because yeh choked Sis off in th' stretch. She could ha' slept
+home a winner, an' yeh know it, Billy," said Red, with sullen regret.
+
+There was a time when he never would have dared to call Garrison by his
+Christian name. Disgrace is a great leveler. Red grew more conscious of
+his own rectitude.
+
+"I ain't knockin' yeh, Billy," he continued, speaking slowly, to
+lengthen the pleasure of thus monopolizing the pulpit. "What have I to
+say? Yeh can ride rings round any jockey in the States--at least, yeh
+could." And then, like his kind, Red having nothing to say, proceeded to
+say it.
+
+"But it weren't your first thrown race, Billy. Yeh know that. I know
+how yeh doped it out. I know we ain't got much time to make a pile if
+we keep at th' game. Makin' weight makes yeh a lunger. We all die of th'
+hurry-up stunt. An' yeh're all right to your owner so long's yeh make
+good. After that it's twenty-three, forty-six, double time for yours. I
+know what th' game is when you've hit th' top of th' pile. It's a fast
+mob, an' yeh got to keep up with th' band-wagon. You're makin' money
+fast and spendin' it faster. Yeh think it'll never stop comin' your way.
+Yeh dip into everythin'. Then yeh wake up some day without your pants,
+and yeh breeze about to make th' coin again. There's a lot of wise eggs
+handin' out crooked advice--they take the coin and you th' big stick.
+Yeh know, neither Crimmins or the Old Man was in on your deals, but yeh
+had it all framed up with outside guys. Yeh bled the field to soak a
+pile. See, Bill," he finished eloquently, "it weren't your first race."
+
+"I know, I know," said Garrison grimly. "Cut it out. You don't
+understand, and it's no good talking. When you have reached the top of
+the pile, Red, you'll travel with as fast a mob as I did. But I never
+threw a race in my life. That's on the level. Somehow I always get blind
+dizzy in the stretch, and it passed when I crossed the post. I never
+knew when it was coming on. I felt all right other times. I had to make
+the coin, as you say, for I lived up to every cent I made. No, I never
+threw a race--Yes, you can smile, Red," he finished savagely. "Smile if
+your face wants stretching. But that's straight. Maybe I've gone back.
+Maybe I'm all in. Maybe I'm a crook. But there'll come a time, it may
+be one year, it may be a hundred, when I'll come back--clean. I'll make
+good, and if you're on the track, Red, I'll show you that Garrison
+can ride a harder, straighter race than you or any one. This isn't my
+finish. There's a new deal coming to me, and I'm going to see that I get
+it."
+
+Without heeding Red's pessimistic reply. Garrison turned on his heel
+and entered the stall where Sis, the Carter Handicap favorite, was being
+boxed for the coming Belmont opening.
+
+Crimmins, the trainer, looked up sharply as Garrison entered. He was a
+small, hard man, with a face like an ice-pick and eyes devoid of pupils,
+which fact gave him a stony, blank expression. In fact, he had been
+likened once, by Jimmy Drake, to a needle with two very sharp eyes,
+and the simile was merited. But he was an excellent flesh handler; and
+Waterbury, an old ex-bookie, knew what he was about when he appointed
+him head of the stable.
+
+"Hello, Dan!" said Garrison, in the same tone he had used to greet Red.
+He and the trainer had been thick, but it was a question whether that
+thickness would still be there. Garrison, alone in the world since he
+had run away from his home years ago, had no owner as most jockeys have,
+and Crimmins had filled the position of mentor. In fact, he had trained
+him, though Garrison's riding ability was not a foreign graft, but had
+been bred in the bone.
+
+"Hello!" echoed Crimmins, coming forward. His manner was cordial, and
+Garrison's frozen heart warmed. "Of course you'll quit the game," ran
+on the trainer, after an exchange of commonalities. "You're queered for
+good. You couldn't get a mount anywhere. I ain't saying anything about
+your pulling Sis, 'cause there ain't no use now. But you've got me and
+Mr. Waterbury in trouble. It looked as if we were in on the deal. I
+should be sore on you, Garrison, but I can't be. And why? Because Dan
+Crimmins has a heart, and when he likes a man he likes him even if
+murder should come 'atween. Dan Crimmins ain't a welcher. You've done
+me as dirty a deal as one man could hand another, but instead of getting
+hunk, what does Dan Crimmins do? Why, he agitates his brain thinking of
+a way for you to make a good living, Bud. That's Dan Crimmins' way."
+
+Garrison was silent. He did not try to vindicate himself. He had given
+that up as hopeless. He was thinking, oblivious to Crimmins' eulogy.
+
+"Yeh," continued the upright trainer; "that's Dan Crimmins' way. And
+after much agitating of my brain I've hit on a good money-making scheme
+for you, Bud."
+
+"Eh?" asked Garrison.
+
+"Yeh." And the trainer lowered his voice. "I know a man that's goin'
+to buck the pool-rooms in New York. He needs a chap who knows the
+ropes--one like you--and I gave him your name. I thought it would come
+in handy. I saw your finish a long way off. This fellah's in the Western
+Union; an operator with the pool-room lines. You can run the game. It's
+easy. See, he holds back the returns, tipping you the winners, and you
+skin round and lay the bets before he loosens up on the returns. It's
+easy money; easy and sure."
+
+Again Garrison was silent. But now a smile was on his face. He had been
+asking himself what was the use of honesty.
+
+"What d'you say?" asked Crimmins, his head on one side, his small eyes
+calculating.
+
+The smile was still twisting Garrison's lip. "I was going to light out,
+anyway," he answered slowly. "I'll answer you when I say good-by to
+Sis."
+
+"All right. She's over there."
+
+The handlers fell back in silence as Garrison approached the filly. He
+was softly humming the music-hall song, "Good-by, Sis." With all his
+faults, the handlers to a man liked Garrison. They knew how he had
+professed to love the filly, and now they sensed that he would prefer
+to say his farewell without an audience. Sis whinnied as Garrison raised
+her small head and looked steadily into her soft, dark eyes.
+
+"Sis," he said slowly, "it's good-by. We've been pals, you and I; pals
+since you were first foaled. You're the only girl I have; the only
+sweetheart I have; the only one to say good-by to me. Do you care?"
+
+The filly nuzzled at his shoulder. "I've done you dirt to-day,"
+continued the boy a little unsteadily. "It was your race from the start.
+You know it; I know it. I can't explain now, Sis, how it came about. But
+I didn't go to do it. I didn't, girlie. You understand, don't you? I'll
+square that deal some day, Sis. I'll come back and square it. Don't
+forget me. I won't forget you--I can't. You don't think me a crook, Sis?
+Say you don't. Say it," he pleaded fiercely, raising her head.
+
+The filly understood. She lipped his face, whinnying lovingly. In a
+moment Garrison's nerve had been swept away, and, arms flung about the
+dark, arched neck, he was sobbing his heart out on the glossy coat;
+sobbing like a little child.
+
+How long he stayed there, the filly nuzzling him like a mother, he did
+not know. It seemed as if he had reached sanctuary after an aeon of
+chaos. He had found love, understanding in a beast of the field. Where
+his fellow man had withheld, the filly had given her all and questioned
+not. For Sis, by Rex out of Reine, two-year filly, blooded stock, was
+a thoroughbred. And a thoroughbred, be he man, beast, or bird, does not
+welch on his hand. A stranger only in prosperity; a chum in adversity.
+He does not question; he gives.
+
+"Well," said Crimmins, as Garrison slowly emerged from the stall, "you
+take the partin' pretty next your skin. What's your answer to the game I
+spoke of? Mulled it over? It don't take much thinking, I guess." He was
+paring his mourning fringed nails with great indifference.
+
+"No, it doesn't take much thinking, Dan," agreed Garrison slowly, his
+eyes narrowed. "I'll rot first before I touch it."
+
+"Yes?" The trainer raised his thick eyebrows and lowered his thin voice.
+"Kind of tony, ain't yeh? Beggars can't be choosers."
+
+"They needn't be crooks, Dan. I know you meant it all right enough,"
+said Garrison bitterly. "You think I'm crooked, and that I'd take
+anything--anything; dirt of any kind, so long's there's money under it."
+
+"Aw, sneeze!" said Crimmins savagely. Then he checked himself. "It
+ain't my game. I only knew the man. There's nothing in it for me. Suit
+yourself;" and he shrugged his shoulders. "It ain't Crimmins' way to
+hump his services on any man. Take it or leave it."
+
+"You wanted me to go crooked, Dan," said Garrison steadily. "Was it
+friendship--"
+
+"Huh! Wanted you to go crooked?" flashed the trainer with a sneer. "What
+are y' talking about? Ain't yeh a welcher now? Ain't yeh crooked--hair,
+teeth, an' skin?"
+
+"You mean that, Dan?" Garrison's face was white. "You've trained me,
+and yet you, too, believe I was in on those lost races? You know I lost
+every cent on Sis--"
+
+"It ain't one race, it's six," snorted Crimmins. "It's Crimmins' way to
+agitate his brain for a friend, but it ain't his way to be a plumb fool.
+You can't shoot that bull con into me, Bud. I know you. I give you an
+offer, friend and friend. You turn it down and 'cuse me of making you
+play crooked. I'm done with you. It ain't Crimmins' way."
+
+Billy Garrison eyed his former trainer and mentor steadily for a long
+time. His lip was quivering.
+
+"Damn your way!" he said hoarsely at length, and turned on his heel. His
+hands were deep in his pockets, his shoulders hunched as he swung out
+of the stable. He was humming over and over the old music-hall favorite,
+"Good-by, Sis"--humming in a desperate effort to keep his nerve. Billy
+Garrison had touched bottom in the depths.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+THE HEAVY HAND OF FATE.
+
+Garrison left Long Island for New York that night. When you are hard
+hit the soul suffers a reflex-action. It recoils to its native soil.
+New York was Garrison's home. He was a product of its sporting soil.
+He loved the Great White Way. But he had drunk in the smell, the
+intoxication of the track with his mother's milk. She had been from
+the South; the land of straight women, straight men, straight living,
+straight riding. She had brought blood--good, clean blood--to the
+Garrison-Loring entente cordiale--a polite definition of a huge mistake.
+
+From his mother Garrison had inherited his cool head, steady eye, and
+the intuitive hands that could compel horse-flesh like a magnet. From
+her he had inherited a peculiar recklessness and swift daring. From his
+father--well, Garrison never liked to talk about his father. His mother
+was a memory; his father a blank. He was a good-looking, bad-living
+sprig of a straight family-tree. He had met his wife at the New Orleans
+track, where her father, an amateur horse-owner, had two entries.
+And she had loved him. There is good in every one. Perhaps she had
+discovered it in Garrison's father where no one else had.
+
+Her family threw her off--at least, when she came North with her
+husband, she gradually dropped out of her home circle; dropped of
+her own volition. Perhaps she was afraid that the good she had first
+discovered in her husband had been seen through a magnifying-glass.
+Her life with Garrison was a constant whirlwind of changing scene and
+fortune--the perpetual merry--or sorry--go-round of a book-maker; going
+from track to track, and from bad to worse. His friends said he was
+unlucky; his enemies, that the only honest thing in him was his cough.
+He had incipient consumption. So Mrs. Garrison's life, such as it was,
+had been lived in a trunk--when it wasn't held for hotel bills--but she
+had lived out her mistake gamely.
+
+When the boy came--Billy--she thought Heaven had smiled upon her at
+last. But it was only hell. Garrison loved his wife, for love is not a
+quality possessed only by the virtuous. Sometimes the worst man can
+love the most--in his selfish way. And Garrison resented the arrival of
+Billy. He resented sharing his wife's affection with the boy.
+
+In time he came to hate his son. Billy's education was chiefly
+constitutional. There wasn't the money to pay for his education for any
+length of time. His mother had to fight for it piecemeal. So he took
+his education in capsules; receiving a dose in one city and jumping to
+another for the next, according as a track opened.
+
+He knew his father never cared for him, though his mother tried her best
+to gloze over the indifference of her husband. But Billy understood
+and resented it. He and his mother loved in secret. When she died, her
+mistake lived out to the best of her ability, young Garrison promptly
+ran away from his circulating home. He knew nothing of his father's
+people; nothing of his mother's. He was a young derelict; his inherent
+sense of honor and an instinctive desire for cleanliness kept him off
+the rocks.
+
+The years between the time he left home and the period when he won his
+first mount on the track, his natural birthright, Billy Garrison often
+told himself he would never care to look back upon. He was young, and
+he did not know that years of privation, of hardship, of
+semi-starvation--but with an insistent ambition goading one on--are not
+years to eliminate in retrospect. They are years to reverence.
+
+He did not know that prosperity, not adversity, is the supreme test. And
+when the supreme test came; when the goal was attained, and the golden
+sun of wealth, fame, and honor beamed down upon him, little Billy
+Garrison was found wanting. He was swamped by the flood. He went the way
+of many a better, older, wiser man--the easy, rose-strewn way, big and
+broad and scented, that ends in a bottomless abyss filled with bitter
+tears and nauseating regrets; the abyss called, "It might have been."
+
+Where he had formerly shunned vice by reason of adversity and poverty
+making it appear so naked, revolting, unclean, foreign to his state,
+prosperity had now decked it out in her most sensuous, alluring
+garments. Red's moral diatribe had been correct. Garrison had followed
+the band-wagon to the finish, never asking where it might lead; never
+caring. He had youth, reputation, money--he could never overdraw that
+account. And so the modern pied piper played, and little Garrison
+blindly danced to the music with the other fools; danced on and on until
+he was swallowed up in the mountain.
+
+Then he awoke too late, as they all awake; awoke to find that his vigor
+had been sapped by early suppers and late breakfasts; his finances
+depleted by slow horses and fast women; his nerve frayed to ribbons by
+gambling. And then had come that awful morning when he first commenced
+to cough. Would he, could he, ever forget it?
+
+Billy Garrison huddled down now in the roaring train as he thought of
+it. It was always before him, a demoniacal obsession--that morning when
+he coughed, and a bright speck of arterial blood stood out like a tardy
+danger-signal against the white of his handkerchief; it was leering at
+him, saying: "I have been here always, but you have chosen to be blind."
+
+Consumption--the jockey's Old Man of the Sea--had arrived at last. He
+had inherited the seeds from his father; he had assiduously cultivated
+them by making weight against all laws of nature; by living against laws
+of God and man. Now they had been punished as they always are. Nature
+had struck, struck hard.
+
+That had been the first warning, and Garrison did not heed it. Instead
+of quitting the game, taking what little assets he had managed to save
+from the holocaust, and living quietly, striving for a cure, he kicked
+over the traces. The music of the pied piper was still in his ears;
+twisting his brain. He gritted his teeth. He would not give in. He would
+show that he was master. He would fight this insidious vitality vampire;
+fight and conquer.
+
+Besides, he had to make money. The thought of going back to a pittance a
+year sickened him. That pittance had once been a fortune to him. But his
+appetite had not been gorged, satiated; rather, it had the resilience of
+crass youth; jumping the higher with every indulgence. It increased
+in ratio with his income. He had no one to guide him; no one to compel
+advice with a whip, if necessary. He knew it all. So he kept his curse
+secret. He would pile up one more fortune, retain it this time, and
+then retire. But nature had balked. The account--youth, reputation,
+money--was overthrown at last.
+
+Came a day when in the paddock Dan Crimmins had seen that fleck of
+arterial blood on the handkerchief. Then Dan shared the secret. He
+commenced to doctor Garrison. Before every race the jockey had a drug.
+But despite it he rode worse than an exercise-boy; rode despicably. The
+Carter Handicap had finished his deal. And with it Garrison had lost his
+reputation.
+
+He had done many things in his mad years of prosperity--the mistakes,
+the faults of youth. But Billy Garrison was right when he said he was
+square. He never threw a race in his life. Horseflesh, the "game," was
+sacred to him. He had gone wild, but never crooked. But the world now
+said otherwise, and it is only the knave, the saint, and the fool who
+never heed what the world says.
+
+And so at twenty-two, when the average young man is leaving college for
+the real taste of life, little Garrison had drained it to the dregs; the
+lees tasted bitter in his mouth.
+
+For obvious reasons Garrison had not chosen his usual haven, the
+smoking-car, on the train. It was filled to overflowing from the
+Aqueduct track, and he knew that his name would be mentioned frequently
+and in no complimentary manner. His soul had been stripped bare,
+sensitive to a breath. It would writhe under the mild compassion of a
+former admirer as much as it would under the open jibes of his enemies.
+He had plenty of enemies. Every "is," "has-been," "would-be," "will-be"
+has enemies. It is well they have. Nothing is lost in nature. Enemies
+make you; not your friends.
+
+Garrison had selected a car next to the smoker and occupied a seat at
+the forward end, his back to the engine. His hands were deep in his
+pockets, his shoulders hunched, his eyes staring straight ahead under
+the brim of his slouch-hat. His eyes were looking inward, not outward;
+they did not see his surroundings; they were looking in on the ruin of
+his life.
+
+The present, the future, did not exist; only the past lived--lived with
+all the animalism of a rank growth. He was too far in the depths to even
+think of reerecting his life's structure. His cough was troubling him;
+his brain throbbing, throbbing.
+
+Then, imperceptibly, as Garrison's staring, blank eyes slowly turned
+from within to without, occasioned by a violent jolt of the train,
+something flashed across their retina; they became focused, and a
+message was wired to his brain. Instantly his eyes dropped, and he
+fidgeted uncomfortably in his seat.
+
+He found he had been staring into a pair of slate-gray eyes; staring
+long, rudely, without knowing it. Their owner was occupying a seat three
+removed down the aisle. As he was seated with his back to the engine, he
+was thus confronting them.
+
+She was a young girl with indefinite hair, white skin coated with tan,
+and a very steady gaze. She would always be remembered for her eyes.
+Garrison instantly decided that they were beautiful. He furtively peered
+up from under his hat. She was still looking at him fixedly without the
+slightest embarrassment.
+
+Garrison was not susceptible to the eternal feminine. He was old with a
+boy's face. Yet he found himself taking snap-shots at the girl opposite.
+She was reading now. Unwittingly he tried to criticize every feature. He
+could not. It was true that they were far from being regular; her nose
+went up like her short upper lip; her chin and under lip said that she
+had a temper and a will of her own. He noted also that she had a
+mole under her left eye. But one always returned from the facial
+peregrinations to her eyes. After a long stare Garrison caught himself
+wishing that he could kiss those eyes. That threw him into a panic.
+
+"Be sad, be sad," he advised himself gruffly. "What right have you to
+think? You're rude to stare, even if she is a queen. She wouldn't wipe
+her boots on you."
+
+Having convinced himself that he should not think, Garrison promptly
+proceeded to speculate. How tall was she? He likened her flexible figure
+to Sis. Sis was his criterion. Then, for the brain is a queer actor,
+playing clown when it should play tragedian, Garrison discovered that
+he was wishing that the girl would not be taller than his own five feet
+two.
+
+"As if it mattered a curse," he laughed contemptuously.
+
+His eyes were transferred to the door. It had opened, and with the puff
+of following wind there came a crowd of men, emerging like specters from
+the blue haze of the smoker. They had evidently been "smoked out." Some
+of them were sober.
+
+Garrison half-lowered his head as the crowd entered. He did not wish to
+be recognized. The men, laughing noisily, crowded into what seats were
+unoccupied. There was one man more than the available space, and
+he started to occupy the half-vacant seat beside the girl with the
+slate-colored eyes. He was slightly more than fat, and the process of
+making four feet go into two was well under way when the girl spoke.
+
+"Pardon me, this seat is reserved."
+
+"Don't look like it," said Behemoth.
+
+"But I say it is. Isn't that enough?"
+
+"Full house; no reserved seats," observed the man placidly, squeezing
+in.
+
+The girl flashed a look at him and then was silent. A spot of red was
+showing through the tan on her cheek; Garrison was watching her under
+his hat-brim. He saw the spot on her cheeks slowly grow and her eyes
+commence to harden. He saw that she was being annoyed surreptitiously
+and quietly. Behemoth was a Strephon, and he thought that he had found
+his Chloe.
+
+Garrison pulled his hat well down over his face, rose negligently, and
+entered the next car. He waited there a moment and then returned. He
+swung down the aisle. As he approached the girl he saw her draw back.
+Strephon's foot was deliberately pressing Chloe's.
+
+Garrison avoided a scene for the girl's sake. He tapped the man on the
+shoulder.
+
+"Pardon me. My seat, if you please. I left it for the smoker."
+
+The man looked up, met Garrison's cold, steady eyes, rose awkwardly,
+muttered something about not knowing it was reserved, and squeezed in
+with two of his companions farther down the aisle.
+
+Garrison sat down without glancing at the girl. He became absorbed in
+the morning paper--twelve hours old.
+
+Silence ensued. The girl had understood the fabrication instantly. She
+waited, her antagonism roused, to see whether Garrison would try to
+take advantage of his courtesy. When he was entirely oblivious of her
+presence she commenced to inspect him covertly out of the corners of her
+gray eyes. After five minutes she spoke.
+
+"Thank you," she said simply. Her voice was soft and throaty.
+
+Garrison absently raised his hat and was about to resume the defunct
+paper when he was interrupted. A hand reached over the back of the seat,
+and before he had thought of resistance, he was flung violently down the
+aisle.
+
+He heard a great laugh from the Behemoth's friends. He rose slowly, his
+fighting blood up. Then he became aware that his ejector was not one of
+the crowd, but a newcomer; a tall man with a fierce white mustache and
+imperial; dressed in a frock coat and wide, black slouch hat. He was
+talking.
+
+"How dare you insult my daughter, suh?" he thundered. "By thunder,
+suh, I've a good mind to make you smart right proper for your lack of
+manners, suh! How dare you, suh? You--you contemptible little--little
+snail, suh! Snail, suh!" And quite satisfied at thus selecting the
+most fitting word, glaring fiercely and twisting his white mustache and
+imperial with a very martial air, he seated himself majestically by his
+daughter.
+
+Garrison recognized him. He was Colonel Desha, of Kentucky, whose horse,
+Rogue, had won the Carter Handicap through Garrison's poor riding of the
+favorite, Sis. His daughter was expostulating with him, trying to insert
+the true version of the affair between her father's peppery exclamations
+of "Occupying my seat!" "I saw him raise his hat to you!" "How dare he?"
+"Complain to the management against these outrageous flirts!" "Abominable
+manners!" etc., etc.
+
+Meanwhile Garrison had silently walked into the smoker. He tried to
+dismiss the incident from his mind, but it stuck; stuck as did the
+girl's eyes.
+
+At the next station a newsboy entered the car. Garrison idly bought a
+paper. It was full of the Carter Handicap, giving both Crimmins' and
+Waterbury's version of the affair. Public opinion, it seemed, was with
+them. They had protested the race. It had been thrown, and Garrison's
+dishonor now was national.
+
+There was a column of double-leaded type on the first page, run in
+after the making up of the paper's body, and Garrison's bitter eyes
+negligently scanned it. But at the first word he straightened up as if
+an electric shock had passed through him.
+
+"Favorite for the Carter Handicap Poisoned," was the great, staring
+title. The details were meager; brutally meager. They were to the effect
+that some one had gained access to the Waterbury stable and had fed Sis
+strychnine.
+
+Garrison crumpled up the paper and buried his face in his hands, making
+no pretense of hiding his misery. She had been more than a horse to him;
+she had been everything.
+
+"Sis--Sis," he whispered over and over again, the tears burning to his
+eyes, his throat choking: "I didn't get a chance to square the deal.
+Sis--Sis it was good-by--good-by forever."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+BEGINNING A NEW LIFE.
+
+On arriving at the Thirty-fourth Street ferry Garrison idly boarded a
+Forty-second Street car, drifting aimlessly with the main body of Long
+Island passengers going westward to disintegrate, scatter like
+the fragments of a bursting bomb, at Broadway. A vague sense of
+proprietorship, the kiss of home, momentarily smoothed out the wrinkles
+in his soul as the lights of the Great White Way beamed down a welcome
+upon him. Then it was slowly borne in on him that, though with the
+crowd, he was not of it. His mother, the great cosmopolitan city, had
+repudiated him. For Broadway is a place for presents or futures; she has
+no welcome for pasts. With her, charity begins at home--and stays there.
+
+Garrison drifted hither and thither with every cross eddy of humanity,
+and finally dropped into the steady pulsating, ever-moving tide on the
+west curb going south--the ever restless tide that never seems to reach
+the open sea. As he passed one well-known cafe after another his mind
+carried him back over the waste stretch of "It might have been" to
+the time when he was their central figure. On every block he met
+acquaintances who had even toasted him--with his own wine; toasted
+him as the kingpin. Now they either nodded absently or became suddenly
+vitally interested in a show-window or the new moon.
+
+All sorts and conditions of men comprised that list of former friends,
+and not one now stepped out and wrung his hand; wrung it as they had
+only the other day, when they thought he would retrieve his fortunes by
+pulling off the Carter Handicap. They did not wring it now, for there
+was nothing to wring out of it. Now he was not only hopelessly down
+in the muck of poverty, but hopelessly dishonored. And gentlemanly
+appearing blackguards, who had left all honesty in the cradle, now
+wouldn't for the world be seen talking on Broadway to little Billy
+Garrison, the horribly crooked jockey.
+
+It wouldn't do at all. First, because their own position was so
+precarious that a breath would send it tottering. Secondly, because
+Billy might happen to inconveniently remember all the sums of money he
+had "loaned" them time and again. Actual necessity might tend to waken
+his memory. For they had modernized the proverb into: "A friend in need
+is a friend to steer clear of."
+
+A lesson in mankind and the making had been coming to Garrison, and in
+that short walk down Broadway he appreciated it to the uttermost.
+
+"Think I had the mange or the plague," he mused grimly, as a plethoric
+ex-alderman passed and absent-mindedly forgot to return his bow--an
+alderman who had been tipped by Garrison in his palmy days to a small
+fortune. "What if I had thrown the race?" he ran on bitterly. "Many a
+jockey has, and has lived to tell it. No, there's more behind it all
+than that. I've passed sports who wouldn't turn me down for that. But I
+suppose Bender" (the plethoric alderman) "staked a pot on Sis, she being
+the favorite and I up. And when he loses he forgets the times I tipped
+him to win. Poor old Sis!" he added softly, as the fact of her poisoning
+swept over him. "The only thing that cared for me--gone! I'm down on my
+luck--hard. And it's not over yet. I feel it in the air. There's another
+fall coming to me."
+
+He shivered through sheer nervous exhaustion, though the night was warm
+for mid-April. He rummaged in his pocket.
+
+"One dollar in bird-seed," he mused grimly, counting the coins under the
+violet glare of a neighboring arc light. "All that's between me and the
+morgue. Did I ever think it would come to that? Well, I need a bracer.
+Here goes ten for a drink. Can only afford bar whisky."
+
+He was standing on the corner of Twenty-fifth Street, and unconsciously
+he turned into the cafe of the Hoffman House. How well he knew its every
+square inch! It was filled with the usual sporting crowd, and Garrison
+entered as nonchalantly as if his arrival would merit the same commotion
+as in the long ago. He no longer cared. His depression had dropped from
+him. The lights, the atmosphere, the topics of conversation, discussion,
+caused his blood to flow like lava through his veins. This was home,
+and all else was forgotten. He was not the discarded jockey, but Billy
+Garrison, whose name on the turf was one to conjure with.
+
+And then, even as he had awakened from his dream on Broadway, he now
+awoke to an appreciation of the immensity of his fall from grace. He
+knew fully two-thirds of those present. Some there were who nodded, some
+kindly, some pityingly. Some there were who cut him dead, deliberately
+turning their backs or accurately looking through the top of his hat.
+
+Billy's square chin went up to a point and his under lip came out. He
+would not be driven out. He would show them. He was as honest as any
+there; more honest than many; more foolish than all. He ordered a drink
+and seated himself by a table, indifferently eyeing the shifting crowd
+through the fluttering curtain of tobacco-smoke.
+
+The staple subject of conversation was the Carter Handicap, and he
+sensed rather than noted the glances of the crowd as they shifted
+curiously to him and back again. At first he pretended not to notice
+them, but after a certain length of time his oblivion was sincere, for
+retrospect came and claimed him for its own.
+
+He was aroused by footsteps behind him; they wavered, stopped, and a
+large hand was laid on his shoulder.
+
+"Hello, kid! You here, too?"
+
+He looked up quickly, though he knew the voice. It was Jimmy Drake,
+and he was looking down at him, a queer gleam in his inscrutable eyes.
+Garrison nodded without speaking. He noticed that the book-maker had not
+offered to shake hands, and the knowledge stung. The crowd was watching
+them curiously, and Drake waved off, with a late sporting extra he
+carried, half a dozen invitations to liquidate.
+
+"Kid," he said, lowering his voice, his hand still on Garrison's
+shoulder, "what did you come here for? Why don't you get away? Waterbury
+may be here any minute."
+
+"What's that to me?" spat out Billy venomously. "I'm not afraid of him.
+No call to be."
+
+Drake considered, the queer look still in his eyes.
+
+"Don't get busty, kid. I don't know how you ever come to do it, but it's
+a serious game, a dirty game, and I guess it may mean jail for you, all
+right."
+
+"What do you mean?" Garrison's pinched face had gone slowly white. A
+vague premonition of impending further disaster possessed him, amounting
+almost to an obsession. "What do you mean, Jimmy?" he reiterated
+tensely.
+
+Drake was silent, still scrutinizing him.
+
+"Kid," he said finally, "I don't like to think it of you--but I know
+what made you do it. You were sore on Waterbury; sore for losing. You
+wanted to get hunk on something. But I tell you, kid, there's no deal
+too rotten for a man who poisons a horse--"
+
+"Poisons a horse," echoed Garrison mechanically. "Poisons a horse.
+Good Lord, Drake!" he cried fiercely, in a sudden wave of passion and
+understanding, jumping from his chair, "you dare to say that I poisoned
+Sis! You dare--"
+
+"No, I don't. The paper does."
+
+"The paper lies! Lies, do you hear? Let me see it! Let me see it! Where
+does it say that? Where, where? Show it to me if you can! Show it to
+me--"
+
+His eyes slowly widened in horror, and his mouth remained agape, as
+he hastily scanned the contents of an article in big type on the
+first page. Then the extra dropped from his nerveless fingers, and
+he mechanically seated himself at the table, his eyes vacant. To his
+surprise, he was horribly calm. Simply his nerves had snapped; they
+could torture him no longer by stretching.
+
+"It's not enough to have--have her die, but I must be her poisoner," he
+said mechanically.
+
+"It's all circumstantial evidence, or nearly so," added Drake, shifting
+from one foot to the other. "You were the only one who would have a
+cause to get square. And Crimmins says he gave you permission to see her
+alone. Even the stable-hands say that. It looks bad, kid. Here, don't
+take it so hard. Get a cinch on yourself," he added, as he watched
+Garrison's blank eyes and quivering face.
+
+"I'm all right. I'm all right," muttered Billy vaguely, passing a hand
+over his throbbing temples.
+
+Drake was silent, fidgeting uneasily.
+
+"Kid," he blurted out at length, "it looks as if you were all in. Say,
+let me be your bank-roll, won't you? I know you lost every cent on Sis,
+no matter what they say. I'll give you a blank check, and you can fill
+it out--"
+
+"No, thanks, Jimmy."
+
+"Don't be touchy, kid. You'd do the same for me--"
+
+"I mean it, Drake. I don't want a cent. I'm not hard up. Thanks all the
+same." Garrison's rag of honor was fluttering in the wind of his pride.
+
+"Well," said Drake, finally and uncomfortably, "if you ever want it,
+Billy, you know where to come for it. I want to go down on the books as
+your friend, hear? Mind that. So-long."
+
+"So-long, Jimmy. And I won't forget your stand."
+
+Garrison continued staring at the floor. This, then, was the reason why
+the sporting world had cut him dead; for a horse-poisoner is ranked in
+the same category as that assigned to the horse-stealer of the Western
+frontier. There, a man's horse is his life; to the turfman it is his
+fortune--one and the same. And so Crimmins had testified that he had
+permitted him, Garrison, to see Sis alone!
+
+Yes, the signals were set dead against him. His opinion of Crimmins
+had undergone a complete revolution; first engendered by the trainer
+offering him a dishonorable opportunity of fleecing the New York
+pool-rooms; now culminated by his indirect charge.
+
+Garrison considered the issue paramount. He was furious, though so
+seemingly indifferent. Every ounce of resentment in his nature had been
+focused to the burning-point. Now he would not leave New York. Come what
+might, he would stand his ground. He would not run away. He would fight
+the charge; fight Waterbury, Crimmins--the world, if necessary. And
+mingled with the warp and woof of this resolve was another; one that he
+determined would comprise the color-scheme of his future existence; he
+would ferret out the slayer of Sis; not merely for his own vindication,
+but for hers. He regarded her slayer as a murderer, for to him Sis had
+been more than human.
+
+Garrison came to himself by hearing his name mentioned. Behind him two
+young men were seated at a table, evidently unaware of his identity, for
+they were exchanging their separate views on the running of the Carter
+Handicap and the subsequent poisoning of the favorite.
+
+"And I say," concluded the one whose nasal twang bespoke the New
+Englander; "I say that it was a dirty race all through."
+
+"One paper hints that the stable was in on it; wanted to hit the bookies
+hard," put in his companion diffidently.
+
+"No," argued the wise one, some alcohol and venom in his syllables,
+"Waterbury's all right. He's a square sport. I know. I ought to know,
+for I've got inside information. A friend of mine has a cousin who's
+married to the brother of a friend of Waterbury's aunt's half-sister.
+So I ought to know. Take it from me," added this Bureau of Inside
+Information, beating the table with an insistent fist; "it was a put-up
+job of Garrison's. I'll bet he made a mint on it. All these jockeys are
+crooked. I may be from Little Falls, but I know. You can't fool me. I've
+been following Garrison's record--"
+
+"Then what did you bet on him for?" asked his companion mildly.
+
+"Because I thought he might ride straight for once. And being up on Sis,
+I thought he couldn't help but win. And so I plunged--heavy. And now,
+by Heck! ten dollars gone, and I'm mad; mad clear through. Sis was a
+corker, and ought to have had the race. I read all about her in
+the Little Falls _Daily Banner_. I'd just like to lay hands on that
+Garrison--a miserable little whelp; that's what he is. He ought to have
+poisoned himself instead of the horse. I hope Waterbury'll do him up.
+I'll see him about it."
+
+Garrison slowly rose, his face white, eyes smoldering. The devil was
+running riot through him. His resentment had passed from the apathetic
+stage to the fighting. So this was the world's opinion of him! Not only
+the world, but miserable wastrels of sports who "plunged heavy" with ten
+dollars! His name was to be bandied in their unclean mouths! He, Billy
+Garrison, former premier jockey, branded as a thing beyond redemption!
+He did not care what might happen, but he would kill that lie here and
+now. He was glad of the opportunity; hungry to let loose some of the
+resentment seething within him.
+
+The Bureau of Inside Information and his companion looked up as Billy
+Garrison stood over them, hands in pockets. Both men had been drinking.
+Drake and half the cafe's occupants had drifted out.
+
+"Which of you gentlemen just now gave his opinion of Billy Garrison?"
+asked the jockey quietly.
+
+"I did, neighbor. Been roped in, too?" Inside Information splayed out
+his legs, and, with a very blase air, put his thumbs in the armholes
+of his execrable vest. He owned a rangy frame and a loose mouth. He
+was showing the sights of Gotham to a friend, and was proud of his
+knowledge. But he secretly feared New York because he did not know it.
+
+"Oh, it was you?" snapped Garrison venomously. "Well, I don't know your
+name, but mine's Billy Garrison, and you're a liar!" He struck Inside
+Information a whack across the face that sent him a tumbled heap on the
+floor.
+
+There is no one so dangerous as a coward. There is nothing so dangerous
+as ignorance. The New Englander had heard much of Gotham's undercurrent
+and the brawls so prevalent there. He had heard and feared. He had
+looked for them, fascination in his fear, but till the present had never
+experienced one. He had heard that sporting men carried guns and were
+quick to use them; that when the lie was passed it meant the hospital or
+the morgue. He was thoroughly ignorant of the ways of a great city, of
+the world; incapable of meeting a crisis; of apportioning it at its true
+value. And so now he overdid it.
+
+As Garrison, a contemptuous smile on his face, turned away, and started
+to draw a handkerchief from his hip pocket, the New Englander, thinking
+a revolver was on its way, scrambled to his feet, wildly seized the
+heavy spirit-bottle, and let fly at Garrison's head. There was whisky,
+muscle, sinew, and fear behind the shot.
+
+As Billy turned about to ascertain whether or not his opponent meant
+fight by rising from under the table, the heavy bottle landed full on
+his temple. He crumpled up like a withered leaf, and went over on the
+floor without even a sigh.
+
+It was two weeks later when Garrison regained full consciousness; opened
+his eyes to gaze upon blank walls, blank as the ceiling. He was in a
+hospital, but he did not know it. He knew nothing. The past had become
+a blank. An acute attack of brain-fever had set in, brought on by
+the excitement he had undergone and finished by the smash from the
+spirit-bottle.
+
+There followed many nights when doctors shook their heads and nurses
+frowned; nights when it was thought little Billy Garrison would cross
+the Great Divide; nights when he sat up in the narrow cot, his hands
+clenched as if holding the reins, his eyes flaming as in his feverish
+imagination he came down the stretch, fighting for every inch of the
+way; crying, pleading, imploring: "Go it, Sis; go it! Take the rail!
+Careful, careful! Now--now let her out; let her out! Go, you cripple,
+go--" All the jargon of the turf.
+
+He was a physical, nervous wreck, and the doctors said that he couldn't
+last very long, for consumption had him. It was only a matter of time,
+unless a miracle happened. The breath of his life was going through his
+mouth and nostrils; the breath of his lungs.
+
+No one knew his name at the hospital, not even himself. There was
+nothing to identify him by. For Garrison, after the blow that night, had
+managed to crawl out to the sidewalk like a wounded beast striving to
+find its lair and fighting to die game.
+
+There was no one to say him nay, no friend to help him. And hotel
+managements are notoriously averse to having murder or assault committed
+in their house. So when they saw that Garrison was able to walk they let
+him go, and willingly. Then he had collapsed, crumpled in a heap on the
+sidewalk.
+
+A policeman had eventually found him, and with the uncanny acumen of
+his ilk had unerringly diagnosed the case as a "drunk." From the
+stationhouse to Bellevue, Garrison had gone his weary way, and from
+there, when it was finally discovered he was neither drunk nor insane,
+to Roosevelt Hospital. And no one knew who or what he was, and no one
+cared overmuch. He was simply one of the many unfortunate derelicts of a
+great city.
+
+It was over six months before he left the hospital, cured so far as he
+could be. The doctors called his complaint by a learned and villainously
+unpronounceable name, which, interpreted by the Bowery, meant that Billy
+Garrison "had gone dippy."
+
+But Garrison had not. His every faculty was as acute as it ever had
+been. Simply, Providence had drawn an impenetrable curtain over his
+memory, separating the past from the present; the same curtain that
+divides our presents from our futures. He had no past. It was a blank,
+shot now and then with a vague gleam of things dead and gone.
+
+This oblivion may have been the manifestation of an all-wise Almighty.
+Now, at least, he could not brood over past mistakes, though,
+unconsciously, he might have to live them out. Life to him was a new
+book, not one mark appeared on its clean pages. He did not even know his
+name--nothing.
+
+From the "W. G." on his linen he understood that those were his
+initials, but he could not interpret them; they stood for nothing. He
+had no letters, memoranda in his pockets, bearing his name. And so
+he took the name of William Good. Perhaps the "William" came to him
+instinctively; he had no reason for choosing "Good."
+
+Garrison left the hospital with his cough, a little money the
+superintendent had kindly given to him, and his clothes; that was all.
+
+Handicapped as he was, harried by futile attempts of memory to fathom
+his identity, he was about to renew the battle of life; not as a
+veteran, one who has earned promotion, profited by experience, but as a
+raw recruit.
+
+The big city was no longer an old familiar mother, whose every mood and
+whimsy he sensed unerringly; now he was a stranger. The streets meant
+nothing to him. But when he first turned into old Broadway, a vague,
+uneasy feeling stirred within him; it was a memory struggling like an
+imprisoned bird to be free. Almost the first person he met was Jimmy
+Drake. Garrison was about to pass by, oblivious, when the other seized
+him by the arm.
+
+"Hello, Billy! Where did you drop from--"
+
+"Pardon me, you have made a mistake." Garrison stared coldly, blankly at
+Drake, shook free his arm, and passed on.
+
+"Gee, what a cut!" mused the book-maker, staring after the rapidly
+retreating figure of Garrison. "The frozen mitt for sure. What's
+happened now? Where's he been the past six months? Wearing the same
+clothes, too! Well, somehow I've queered myself for good. I don't know
+what I did or didn't. But I'll keep my eye on him, anyway." To cheer his
+philosophy, Drake passed into the Fifth Avenue for a drink.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+A READY-MADE HEIR.
+
+Garrison had flattered himself that he had known adversity in his
+time, but in the months succeeding his dismissal from the hospital he
+qualified for a post-graduate course in privation. He was cursed with
+the curse of the age; it was an age of specialties, and he had none.
+His only one, the knowledge of the track, had been buried in him, and
+nothing tended to awaken it.
+
+He had no commercial education; nothing but the _savoir-faire_ which
+wealth had given to him, and an inherent breeding inherited from his
+mother. By reason of his physique he was disbarred from mere manual
+labor, and that haven of the failure--the army.
+
+So Garrison joined the ranks of the Unemployed Grand Army of the
+Republic. He knew what it was to sleep in Madison Square Park with
+a newspaper blanket, and to be awakened by the carol of the touring
+policemen. He came to know what it meant to stand in the bread-line, to
+go the rounds of the homeless "one-night stands."
+
+He came perilously near reaching the level of the sodden. His morality
+had suffered with it all. Where in his former days of hardship he had
+health, ambition, a goal to strive for, friends to keep him honest with
+himself, now he had nothing. He was alone; no one cared.
+
+If he had only taken to the track, his passion--legitimate passion--for
+horse-flesh would have pulled him through. But the thought that he ever
+could ride never suggested itself to him.
+
+He had no opportunity of inhaling the track's atmosphere. Sometimes
+he wondered idly why he liked to stop and caress every stray horse. He
+could not know that those same hands had once coaxed thoroughbreds down
+the stretch to victory. His haunts necessarily kept him from meeting
+with those whom he had once known. The few he did happen to meet he cut
+unconsciously as he had once cut Jimmy Drake.
+
+And so day by day Garrison's morality suffered. It is so easy for the
+well-fed to be honest. But when there is the hunger cancer gnawing at
+one's vitals, not for one day, but for many, then honesty and dishonesty
+cease to be concrete realities. It is not a question of piling up
+luxuries, but of supplying mere necessity.
+
+And day by day as the hunger cancer gnawed at Garrison's vitals it
+encroached on his original stock of honesty. He fought every minute
+of the day, but he grimly foresaw that there would come a time when he
+would steal the first time opportunity afforded.
+
+Day by day he saw the depletion of his honor. He was not a moralist,
+a saint, a sinner. Need sweeps all theories aside; in need's fierce
+crucible they are transmuted to concrete realities. Those who have never
+known what it is to be thrown with Garrison's handicap on the charity
+of a great city will not understand. But those who have ever tasted the
+bitter crust of adversity will. And it is the old blatant advice from
+the Seats of the Mighty: "Get a job." The old answer from the hopeless
+undercurrent: "How?"
+
+There came a day when the question of honesty or dishonesty was put up
+to Garrison in a way he had not foreseen. The line was drawn distinctly;
+there was no easy slipping over it by degrees, unnoticed.
+
+The toilet facilities of municipal lodging-houses are severely crude and
+primitive. For the sake of sanitation, the whilom lodger's clothes are
+put in a net and fumigated in a germ-destroying temperature. The men
+congregate together in one long room, in various stages of pre-Adamite
+costumes, and the shower is turned upon them in numerical rotation.
+
+This public washing was one of the many drawbacks to public charity
+which Garrison shivered at. As the warm weather set in he accordingly
+took full advantage of the free baths at the Battery. On his second
+day's dip, as he was leaving, a man whom he had noticed intently
+scanning the bathers tapped him on the arm.
+
+He was shaped like an olive, with a pair of shrewd gray eyes, and a
+clever, clean-shaven mouth. He was well-dressed, and was continually
+probing with a quill tooth-pick at his gold-filled front teeth,
+evidently desirous of excavating some of the precious metal.
+
+"My name's Snark--Theobald D. Snark," he said shortly, thrusting a card
+into Garrison's passive hand. "I am an eminent lawyer, and would be
+obliged if you would favor me with a five minutes' interview in my
+office--American Tract Building."
+
+"Don't know you," said Garrison blandly.
+
+"You'll like me when you do," supplemented the eminent lawyer coolly.
+"Merely a matter of business, you understand. You look as if a little
+business wouldn't hurt you."
+
+"Feel worse," added Billy mildly, inspecting his crumpled outfit.
+
+He was very hungry. He caught eagerly at this quondam opening. Perhaps
+it would be the means of starting him in some legitimate business. Then
+a wild idea came to him, and slowly floated away again as he remembered
+that Mr. Snark had agreed that he did not know him. But while it lasted,
+the idea had been a thrilling one for a penniless, homeless wanderer.
+It had been: Supposing this lawyer knew him? Knew his real identity, and
+had tracked him down for clamoring relatives and a weeping father
+and mother? For to Garrison his parents might have been criminals or
+millionaires so far as he remembered.
+
+The journey to Nassau Street was completed in silence, Mr. Snark
+centering all his faculties on his teeth, and Garrison on the probable
+outcome of this chance meeting.
+
+The eminent lawyer's office was in a corner of the fifth shelf of the
+American Tract Building bookcase. It was unoccupied, Mr. Snark being so
+intelligent as to be able to dispense with the services of office-boy
+and stenographer; it was small but cozy. Offices in that building can be
+rented for fifteen dollars per month.
+
+After the eminent lawyer had fortified himself from a certain black
+bottle labeled "Poison: external use only," which sat beside the
+soap-dish in the little towel-cabinet, he assumed a very preoccupied
+and highly official mien at his roller-top desk, where he became vitally
+interested in a batch of letters, presumably that morning's mail, but
+which in reality bore dates ranging back to the past year.
+
+Then the eminent lawyer delved importantly into an empty letter-file;
+emerged after ten minutes' study in order to give Blackstone a few
+thoroughly familiar turns, opened the window further to cool his fevered
+brain, lit a highly athletic cigar, crossed his legs, and was at last
+at leisure to talk business with Garrison, who had almost fallen asleep
+during the business rush.
+
+"What's your name?" he asked peremptorily.
+
+Ordinarily Garrison would have begged him to go to a climate where
+thermometers are not in demand, but now he was hungry, and wanted a job,
+so he answered obediently: "William Good."
+
+"Good, William," said the eminent lawyer, smiling at himself in the
+little mirror of the towel-cabinet. He understood that he possessed a
+thin vein of humor. Necessary quality for an eminent lawyer. "And no
+occupation, I presume, and no likelihood of one, eh?"
+
+Garrison nodded.
+
+"Well"--and Mr. Snark made a temple of worship from his fat fingers, his
+cigar at right angles, his shrewd gray eyes on the ceiling--"I have a
+position which I think you can fill. To make a long story short, I
+have a client, a very wealthy gentleman of Cottonton, Virginia; name of
+Calvert--Major Henry Clay Calvert. Dare say you've heard of the Virginia
+Calverts," he added, waving the rank incense from the athletic cigar.
+
+He had only heard of the family a week or two ago, but already he
+persuaded himself that their reputation was national, and that his
+business relations with them dated back to the Settlement days.
+
+Garrison found occasion to say he'd never heard of them, and the eminent
+lawyer replied patronizingly that "we all can't be well-connected,
+you know." Then he went on with his short story, which, like all short
+stories, was a very long one.
+
+"Now it appears that Major Calvert has a nephew somewhere whom he has
+never seen, and whom he wishes to recognize; in short, make him his
+heir. He has advertised widely for him during the past few months, and
+has employed a lawyer in almost every city to assist in this hunt for a
+needle in a haystack. This nephew's name is Dagget--William C. Dagget.
+His mother was a half-sister of Major Calvert's. The search for this
+nephew has been going on for almost a year--since Major Calvert heard of
+his brother-in-law's death--but the nephew has not been found."
+
+The eminent lawyer cleared his throat eloquently and relighted the
+athletic cigar, which had found occasion to go out.
+
+"It will be a very fine thing for this nephew," he added speculatively.
+"Very fine, indeed. Major Calvert has no children, and, as I say, the
+nephew will be his heir--if found. Also the lawyer who discovers the
+absent youth will receive ten thousand dollars. Ten thousand dollars is
+not a sum to be sneezed at, Mr. Good. Not to be sneezed at, sir. Not to
+be sneezed at," thundered the eminent lawyer forensically.
+
+Garrison agreed. He would never think of sneezing at it, even if he was
+subject to that form of recreation. But what had that to do with him?
+
+The eminent lawyer attentively scrutinized the blue streamer from his
+cigar.
+
+"Well, I've found him at last. You are he, Mr. Good. Mr. Good, my
+heartiest congratulations, sir." And Mr. Snark insisted upon shaking the
+bewildered Garrison impressively by the hand.
+
+Garrison's head swam. Then his wild dream had come true! His identity
+had been at last discovered! He was not the offspring of some criminal,
+but the scion of a noble Virginia house! But Mr. Snark was talking
+again.
+
+"You see," he began slowly, focusing an attentive eye on Garrison's
+face, noting its every light and shade, "this nice old gentleman and his
+wife are hard up for a nephew. You and I are hard up for money. Why not
+effect a combination? Eh, why not? It would be sinful to waste such
+an opportunity of doing good. In you I give them a nice, respectable
+nephew, who is tired of reaping his wild oats. You are probably much
+better than the original. We are all satisfied. I do everybody a good
+turn by the exercise of a little judgment."
+
+Garrison's dream crumbled to ashes.
+
+"Oh!" he said blankly, "you--you mean to palm me off as the nephew?"
+
+"Exactly, my son, the long-lost nephew. You are fitted for the role.
+They haven't ever seen the original, and then, by chance, you have a
+birthmark, shaped like a spur, beneath your right collar-bone. Oh, yes,
+I marked it while you were bathing. I've hunted the baths in the chance
+of finding a duplicate, for I could not afford to run the risks of
+advertising.
+
+"It seems this nephew has a similar mark, his mother having mentioned
+it once in a letter to her brother, and it is the only means of
+identification. Luck is with us, Mr. Good, and of course you will
+take full advantage of it. As a side bonus you can pay me twenty-five
+thousand or so when you come into the estate on your uncle's death."
+
+The eminent lawyer, his calculating eye still on Garrison, then
+proceeded with much forensic ability and virile imagination to lay the
+full beauties of the "cinch" before him.
+
+"But supposing the real nephew shows up?" asked Garrison hesitatingly,
+after half an hour's discussion.
+
+"Impossible. I am fully convinced he's dead. Possession is nine points
+of the law, my son. If he should happen to turn up, which he won't, why,
+you have only to brand him as a fraud. I'm a kind-hearted man, and I
+merely wish Major Calvert to have the pleasure of killing fatted calf
+for one instead of a burial. I'm sure the real nephew is dead. Anyway,
+the search will be given up when you are found."
+
+"But about identification?"
+
+"Oh, the mark's enough, quite enough. You've never met your kin, but you
+can have very sweet, childish recollections of having heard your mother
+speak of them. I know enough of old Calvert to post you on the family.
+You've lived North all your life. We'll fix up a nice respectable series
+of events regarding how you came to be away in China somewhere, and thus
+missed seeing the advertisement.
+
+"We'll let my discovery of you stand as it is, only we'll substitute the
+swimming-pool of the New York Athletic Club in lieu of the Battery. The
+Battery wouldn't sound good form. Romanticism always makes truth more
+palatable. Trust me to work things to a highly artistic and flawless
+finish. I can procure any number of witnesses--at so much per head--who
+have time and again distinctly heard your childish prattle regarding
+dear Uncle and Aunty Calvert.
+
+"I'll wire on that long-lost nephew has been found, and you can proceed
+to lie right down in your ready-made bed of roses. There won't be any
+thorns. Bit of a step up from municipal lodging-houses, eh?"
+
+Garrison clenched his hands. His honor was in the last ditch. The great
+question had come; not in the guise of a loaf of bread, but this. How
+long his honor put up a fight he did not know, but the eminent lawyer
+was apparently satisfied regarding the outcome, for he proceeded very
+leisurely to read the morning paper, leaving Garrison to his thoughts.
+
+And what thoughts they were! What excuses he made to himself--poor
+hostages to a fast-crumbling honor! Only the exercise of a little
+subterfuge and all this horrible present would be a past. No more
+sleeping in the parks, no more of the hunger cancer. He would have a
+name, friends, kin, a future. Something to live for. Some one to care
+for; some one to care for him. And he would be all that a nephew should
+be; all that, and more. He would make all returns in his power.
+
+He had even reached the point when he saw in the future himself
+confessing the deception; saw himself forgiven and being loved for
+himself alone. And he would confess it all--his share, but not Snark's.
+All he wanted was a start in life. A name to keep clean; traditions to
+uphold, for he had none of his own. All this he would gain for a little
+subterfuge. And perhaps, as Snark had acutely pointed out, he might be a
+better nephew than the original. He would be.
+
+When a man begins to compromise with dishonesty, there is only one
+outcome. Garrison's rag of honor was hauled down. He agreed to the
+deception. He would play the role of William C. Dagget, the lost nephew.
+
+When he made his intention known, the eminent lawyer nodded as if to say
+that Garrison wasted an unnecessary amount of time over a very childish
+problem, and then he proceeded to go into the finer points of the game,
+building up a life history, supplying dates, etc. Then he sent a wire to
+Major Calvert. Afterward he took Garrison to his first respectable lunch
+in months and bought him an outfit of clothes. On their return to the
+corner nook, fifth shelf of the bookcase, a reply was awaiting them from
+Major Calvert. The long-lost nephew, in company with Mr. Snark, was to
+start the next day for Cottonton, Virginia. The telegram was warm, and
+commended the eminent lawyer's ability.
+
+"Son," said the eminent lawyer dreamily, carefully placing the momentous
+wire in his pocket, "a good deed never goes unrewarded. Always remember
+that. There is nothing like the old biblical behest: 'Let us pray.'
+You for your bed of roses; me for--for----" mechanically he went to the
+small towel-cabinet and gravely pointed the unfinished observation with
+the black bottle labeled "Poison."
+
+"To the long-lost nephew, Mr. William C. Dagget. To the bed of roses.
+And to the eminent lawyer, Theobald D. Snark, Esq., who has mended
+a poor fortune with a better brain. Gentlemen," he concluded
+grandiloquently, slowly surveying the little room as if it were an
+overcrowded Colosseum--"gentlemen, with your permission, together with
+that of the immortal Mr. Swiveller, we will proceed to drown it in the
+rosy. Drown it in the rosy, gentlemen." And so saying, Mr. Snark gravely
+tilted the black bottle ceilingward.
+
+The following evening, as the shadows were lengthening, Garrison and
+the eminent lawyer pulled into the neat little station of Cottonton. The
+good-by to Gotham had been said. It had not been difficult for Garrison
+to say good-by. He was bidding farewell to a life and a city that had
+been detestable in the short year he had known it. The lifetime spent in
+it had been forgotten. But with it all he had said good-by to honor.
+On the long train trip he had been smothering his conscience, feebly
+awakened by the approaching meeting, the touch of new clothes, and the
+prospect of a consistently full stomach. He even forgot to cough once or
+twice.
+
+But the conscience was only feebly awakened. The eminent lawyer had
+judged his client right. For as one is never miserly until one has
+acquired wealth, so Garrison was loath to vacate the bed of roses now
+that he had felt how exceedingly pleasant it was. To go back to rags
+and the hunger cancer and homelessness would be hard; very hard even if
+honor stood at the other end.
+
+"There they are--the major and his wife," whispered Snark, gripping
+his arm and nodding out of the window to where a tall, clean-shaven,
+white-haired man and a lady who looked the thoroughbred stood anxiously
+scanning the windows of the cars. Drawn up at the curb behind them was
+a smart two-seated phaeton, with a pair of clean-limbed bays. The driver
+was not a negro, as is usually the case in the South, but a tight-faced
+little man, who looked the typical London cockney that he was.
+
+Garrison never remembered how he got through his introduction to his
+"uncle" and "aunt." His home-coming was a dream. The sense of shame was
+choking him as Major Calvert seized both hands in a stone-crushed grip
+and looked down upon him, steadily, kindly, for a long time.
+
+And then Mrs. Calvert, a dear, middle-aged lady, had her arms about
+Garrison's neck and was saying over and over again in the impulsive
+Southern fashion: "I'm so glad to see you, dear. You've your mother's
+own eyes. You know she and I were chums."
+
+Garrison had choked, and if the eminent lawyer's wonderful vocabulary
+and eloquent manner had not just then intervened, Garrison then and
+there would have wilted and confessed everything. If only, he told
+himself fiercely, Major Calvert and his wife had not been so courteous,
+so trustful, so simple, so transparently honorable, incapable of
+crediting a dishonorable action to another, then perhaps it would not
+have been so difficult.
+
+The ride behind the spanking bays was all a dream; all a dream as they
+drove up the long, white, wide Logan Pike under the nodding trees and
+the soft evening sun. Everything was peaceful--the blue sky, the waving
+corn-fields, the magnolia, the songs of the homing birds. The air tasted
+rich as with great breaths he drew it into his lungs. It gave him hope.
+With this air to aid him he might successfully grapple with consumption.
+
+Garrison was in the rear seat of the phaeton with Mrs. Calvert,
+mechanically answering questions, giving chapters of his fictitious
+life, while she regarded him steadily with her grave blue eyes. Mr.
+Snark and the major were in the middle seat, and the eminent lawyer was
+talking a veritable blue streak, occasionally flinging over his shoulder
+a bolstering remark in answer to one of Mrs. Calvert's questions, as his
+quick ear detected a preoccupation in Garrison's tones, and he sensed
+that there might be a sudden collapse to their rising fortunes. He was
+in a very good humor, for, besides the ten thousand, and the bonus he
+would receive from Garrison on the major's death, he had accepted an
+invitation to stay the week end at Calvert House.
+
+Garrison's inattention was suddenly swept away by the clatter of hoofs
+audible above the noise contributed by the bays. A horse, which Garrison
+instinctively, and to his own surprise, judged to be a two-year-old
+filly, was approaching at a hard gallop down the broad pike. Her rider
+was a young girl, hatless, who now let loose a boyish shout and waved a
+gauntleted hand. Mrs. Calvert, smilingly, returned the hail.
+
+"A neighbor and a lifelong friend of ours," she said, turning to
+Garrison. "I want you to be very good friends, you and Sue. She is a
+very lovely girl, and I know you will like her. I want you to. She has
+been expecting your coming. I am sure she is anxious to see what you
+look like."
+
+Garrison made some absent-minded, commonplace answer. His eyes were
+kindling strangely as he watched the oncoming filly. His blood was
+surging through him. Unconsciously, his hands became ravenous for the
+reins. A vague memory was stirring within him. And then the girl had
+swung her mount beside the carriage, and Major Calvert, with all the
+ceremonious courtesy of the South, had introduced her.
+
+She was a slim girl, with a wealth of indefinite hair, now gold, now
+bronze, and she regarded Garrison with a pair of very steady gray eyes.
+Beautiful eyes they were; and, as she pulled off her gauntlet and bent
+down a slim hand from the saddle, he looked up into them. It seemed as
+if he looked into them for ages. Where had he seen them before? In a
+dream? And her name was Desha. Where had he heard that name? Memory was
+struggling furiously to tear away the curtain that hid the past.
+
+"I'm right glad to see you," said the girl, finally, a slow blush coming
+to the tan of her cheek. She slowly drew away her hand, as, apparently,
+Garrison had appropriated it forever.
+
+"The honor is mine," returned Garrison mechanically, as he replaced his
+hat. Where had he heard that throaty voice?
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+ALSO A READY-MADE HUSBAND.
+
+A week had passed--a week of new life for Garrison, such as he had never
+dreamed of living. Even in the heyday of his fame, forgotten by him,
+unlimited wealth had never brought the peace and content of Calvert
+House. It seemed as if his niche had long been vacant in the household,
+awaiting his occupancy, and at times he had difficulty in realizing that
+he had won it through deception, not by right of blood.
+
+The prognostications of the eminent lawyer, Mr. Snark, to the effect
+that everything would be surprisingly easy, were fully realized. To the
+major and his wife the birthmark of the spur was convincing proof; and,
+if more were needed, the thorough coaching of Snark was sufficient.
+
+More than that, a week had not passed before it was made patently
+apparent to Garrison, much to his surprise and no little dismay, that he
+was liked for himself alone. The major was a father to him, Mrs. Calvert
+a mother in every sense of the word. He had seen Sue Desha twice since
+his "home-coming," for the Calvert and Desha estates joined.
+
+Old Colonel Desha had eyed Garrison somewhat queerly on being first
+introduced, but he had a poor memory for faces, and was unable to
+connect the newly discovered nephew of his neighbor and friend with
+little Billy Garrison, the one-time premiere jockey, whom he had
+frequently seen ride.
+
+The week's stay at Calvert House had already begun to show its
+beneficial effect upon Garrison. The regular living, clean air, together
+with the services of the family doctor, were fighting the consumption
+germs with no little success. For it had not taken the keen eye of the
+major nor the loving one of the wife very long to discover that the
+tuberculosis germ was clutching at Garrison's lungs.
+
+"You've gone the pace, young man," said the venerable family doctor,
+tapping his patient with the stethoscope. "Gone the pace, and now nature
+is clamoring for her long-deferred payment."
+
+The major was present, and Garrison felt the hot blood surge to his
+face, as the former's eyes were riveted upon him.
+
+"Youth is a prodigal spendthrift," put in the major sadly. "But isn't it
+hereditary, doctor? Perhaps the seed was cultivated, not sown, eh?"
+
+"Assiduously cultivated," replied Doctor Blandly dryly. "You'll have to
+get back to first principles, my boy. You've made an oven out of your
+lungs by cigarette smoke. You inhale? Of course. Quite the correct
+thing. Have you ever blown tobacco smoke through a handkerchief? Yes?
+Well, it leaves a dark-brown stain, doesn't it? That's what your
+lungs are like--coated with nicotine. Your wind is gone. That is why
+cigarettes are so injurious. Not because, as some people tell you, they
+are made of inferior tobacco, but because you inhale them. That's where
+the danger is. Smoke a pipe or cigar, if smoke you must; those you don't
+inhale. Keep your lungs for what God intended them for--fresh air. Then,
+your vitality is nearly bankrupt. You've made an old curiosity-shop out
+of your stomach. You require regular sleep--tons of it----"
+
+"But I'm never sleepy," argued Garrison, feeling very much like a
+schoolboy catechised by his master. "When I wake in the morning, I awake
+instantly, every faculty alert--"
+
+"Naturally," grunted the old doctor. "Don't you know that is proof
+positive that you have lived on stimulants? It is artificial. You should
+be drowsy. I'll wager the first thing you do mornings is to roll a
+smoke; eh? Exactly. Smoke on an empty stomach! That's got to be stopped.
+It's the simple life for you. Plenty of exercise in the open air; live,
+bathe, in sunshine. It is the essence of life. I think, major, we can
+cure this young prodigal of yours. But he must obey me--implicitly."
+
+Subsequently, Major Calvert had, for him, a serious conversation with
+Garrison.
+
+"I believe in youth having its fling," he said kindly, in conclusion;
+"but I don't believe in flinging so far that you cannot retrench safely.
+From Doctor Blandly's statements, you seem to have come mighty near
+exceeding the speed limit, my boy."
+
+He bent his white brows and regarded Garrison steadily out of his keen
+eyes, in which lurked a fund of potential understanding.
+
+"But sorrow," he continued, "acts on different natures in different
+ways. Your mother's death must have been a great blow to you. It was to
+me." He looked fixedly at his nails. "I understand fully what it must
+mean to be thrown adrift on the world at the age you were. I don't
+wish you ever to think that we knew of your condition at the time. We
+didn't--not for a moment. I did not learn of your mother's death until
+long afterward, and only of your father's by sheer accident. But we have
+already discussed these subjects, and I am only touching on them now
+because I want you, as you know, to be as good a man as your mother was
+a woman; not a man like your father was. You want to forget that past
+life of yours, my boy, for you are to be my heir; to be worthy of the
+name of Calvert, as I feel confident you will. You have your mother's
+blood. When your health is improved, we will discuss more serious
+questions, regarding your future, your career; also--your marriage." He
+came over and laid a kindly hand on Garrison's shoulder.
+
+And Garrison had been silent. He was in a mental and moral fog. He
+guessed that his supposed father had not been all that a man should be.
+The eminent lawyer, Mr. Snark, had said as much. He knew himself that he
+was nothing that a man should be. His conscience was fully awakened by
+now. Every worthy ounce of blood he possessed cried out for him to go;
+to leave Calvert House before it was too late; before the old major and
+his wife grew to love him as there seemed danger of them doing.
+
+He was commencing to see his deception in its true light; the crime he
+was daily, hourly, committing against his host and hostess; against all
+decency. He had no longer a prop to support him with specious argument,
+for the eminent lawyer had returned to New York, carrying with him
+his initial proceeds of the rank fraud--Major Calvert's check for ten
+thousand dollars.
+
+Garrison was face to face with himself; he was beginning to see his
+dishonesty in all its hideous nakedness. And yet he stayed at Calvert
+House; stayed on the crater of a volcano, fearing every stranger who
+passed, fearing to meet every neighbor; fearing that his deception must
+become known, though reason told him such fear was absurd. He stayed
+at Calvert House, braving the abhorrence of his better self; stayed not
+through any appreciation of the Calvert flesh-pots, nor because of any
+monetary benefits, present or future. He lived in the present, for the
+hour, oblivious to everything.
+
+For Garrison had fallen in love with his next-door neighbor, Sue Desha.
+Though he did not know his past life, it was the first time he had
+understood to the full the meaning of the ubiquitous, potential verb "to
+love." And, instead of bringing peace and content--the whole gamut of
+the virtues--hell awoke in little Billy Garrison's soul.
+
+The second time he had seen her was the day following his arrival, and
+when he had started on Doctor Blandly's open-air treatment.
+
+"I'll have a partner over to put you through your paces in tennis," Mrs.
+Calvert had said, a quiet twinkle in her eye. And shortly afterward, as
+Garrison was aimlessly batting the balls about, feeling very much like
+an overgrown schoolboy, Sue Desha, tennis-racket in hand, had come up
+the drive.
+
+She was bareheaded, dressed in a blue sailor costume, her sleeves rolled
+high on her firm, tanned arms. She looked very businesslike, and was, as
+Garrison very soon discovered.
+
+Three sets were played in profound silence, or, rather, the girl made a
+spectacle out of Garrison. Her services were diabolically unanswerable;
+her net and back court game would have merited the earnest attention of
+an expert, and Garrison hardly knew where a racket began or ended.
+
+At the finish he was covered with perspiration and confusion, while his
+opponent, apparently, had not begun to warm up. By mutual consent, they
+occupied a seat underneath a spreading magnolia-tree, and then the girl
+insisted upon Garrison resuming his coat. They were like two children.
+
+"You'll get cold; you're not strong," said the girl finally, with the
+manner of a very old and experienced mother. She was four years younger
+than Garrison. "Put it on; you're not strong. That's right. Always
+obey."
+
+"I am strong," persisted Garrison, flushing. He felt very like a
+schoolboy.
+
+The girl eyed him critically, calmly.
+
+"Oh, but you're not; not a little bit. Do you know you're
+very--very--rickety? Very rickety, indeed."
+
+Garrison eyed his flannels in visible perturbation. They flapped about
+his thin, wiry shanks most disagreeably. He was painfully conscious of
+his elbows, of his thin chest. Painfully conscious that the girl was
+physical perfection, he was a parody of manhood. He looked up, with a
+smile, and met the girl's frank eyes.
+
+"I think rickety is just the word," he agreed, spanning a wrist with a
+finger and thumb.
+
+"You cannot play tennis, can you?" asked the girl dryly. "Not a little,
+tiny bit."
+
+"No; not a little bit."
+
+"Golf?" Head on one side.
+
+"Not guilty."
+
+"Swim?"
+
+"Gloriously. Like a stone."
+
+"Run?" Head on the other side.
+
+"If there's any one after me."
+
+"Ride? Every one rides down this-away, you know."
+
+A sudden vague passion mouthed at Garrison's heart. "Ride?" he echoed,
+eyes far away. "I--I think so."
+
+"Only think so! Humph!" She swung a restless foot. "Can't you do
+anything?"
+
+"Well," critically. "I think I can eat, and sleep----"
+
+"And talk nonsense. Let me see your hand." She took it imperiously, palm
+up, in her lap, and examined it critically, as if it were the paw of
+some animal. "My! it's as small as a woman's!" she exclaimed, in dismay.
+"Why, you could wear my glove, I believe." There was one part disdain to
+three parts amusement, ridicule, in her throaty voice.
+
+"It is small," admitted Garrison, eyeing it ruefully. "I wish I had
+thought of asking mother to give me a bigger one. Is it a crime?"
+
+"No; a calamity." Her foot was going restlessly. "I like your eyes," she
+said calmly, at length.
+
+Garrison bowed. He was feeling decidedly uncomfortable. He had never met
+a girl like this. Nothing seemed sacred to her. She was as frank as the
+wind, or sun.
+
+"You know," she continued, her great eyes half-closed, "I was awfully
+anxious to see you when I heard you were coming home----"
+
+"Why?"
+
+She turned and faced him, her grey eyes opened wide. "Why? Isn't one
+always interested in one's future husband?"
+
+It was Garrison who was confused. Something caught at his throat. He
+stammered, but words would not come. He laughed nervously.
+
+"Didn't you know we were engaged?" asked the girl, with childlike
+simplicity and astonishment. "Oh, yes. How superb!"
+
+"Engaged? Why--why----"
+
+"Of course. Before we were born. Your uncle and aunt and my parents had
+it all framed up. I thought you knew. A cut-and-dried affair. Are you
+not just wild with delight?"
+
+"But--but," expostulated Garrison, his face white, "supposing the real
+me--I mean, supposing I had not come home? Supposing I had been dead?"
+
+"Why, then," she replied calmly, "then, I suppose, I would have a chance
+of marrying some one I really loved. But what is the use of supposing?
+Here you are, turned up at the last minute, like a bad penny, and here I
+am, very much alive. Ergo, our relatives' wishes respectfully fulfilled,
+and--connubial misery _ad libitum_. _Mes condolences_. If you feel half
+as bad as I do, I really feel sorry for you. But, frankly, I think the
+joke is decidedly on me."
+
+Garrison was silent, staring with hard eyes at the ground. He could not
+begin to analyze his thoughts.
+
+"You are not complimentary, at all events," he said quietly at length.
+
+"So every one tells me," she sighed.
+
+"I did not know of this arrangement," he added, looking up, a queer
+smile twisting his lips.
+
+"And now you are lonesomely miserable, like I am," she rejoined,
+crossing a restless leg. "No doubt you left your ideal in New York.
+Perhaps you are married already. Are you?" she cried eagerly, seizing
+his arm.
+
+"No such good luck--for you," he added, under his breath.
+
+"I thought so," she sighed resignedly. "Of course no one would have you.
+It's hopeless."
+
+"It's not," he argued sharply, his pride, anger in revolt. He, who had
+no right to any claim. "We're not compelled to marry each other. It's a
+free country. It is ridiculous, preposterous."
+
+"Oh, don't get so fussy!" she interrupted petulantly. "Don't you think
+I've tried to kick over the traces? And I've had more time to think of
+it than you--all my life. It is a family institution. Your uncle pledged
+his nephew, if he should have one, and my parents pledged me. We are
+hostages to their friendship. They wished to show how much they cared
+for one another by making us supremely miserable for life. Of course,
+I spent my life in arranging how you should look, if you ever came
+home--which I devoutly hoped you wouldn't. It wouldn't be so difficult,
+you see, if you happened to match my ideals. Then it would be a real
+love-feast, with parents' blessings and property thrown in to boot."
+
+"And then I turned up--a little, under-sized, nothingless pea, instead
+of the regular patented, double-action, stalwart Adonis of your
+imagination," added Garrison dryly.
+
+"How well you describe yourself!" said the girl admiringly.
+
+"It must be horrible!" he condoled half-cynically.
+
+"And of course you, too, were horribly disappointed?" she added, after a
+moment's pause, tapping her oxford with tennis-racket.
+
+Garrison turned and deliberately looked into her gray eyes.
+
+"Yes; I am--horribly," he lied calmly. "My ideal is the dark, quiet girl
+of the clinging type."
+
+"She wouldn't have much to cling to," sniffed the girl. "We'll be
+miserable together, then. Do you know, I almost hate you! I think I do.
+I'm quite sure I do."
+
+Garrison eyed her in silence, the smile on his lips. She returned the
+look, her face flushed.
+
+"Miss Desha--"
+
+"You'll have to call me Sue. You're Billy; I'm Sue. That's one of
+the minor penalties. Our prenatal engagement affords us this charming
+familiarity," she interrupted scathingly.
+
+"Sue, then. Sue," continued Garrison quietly, "from your type, I thought
+you fashioned of better material. Now, don't explode--yet a while. I
+mean property and parents' blessing should not weigh a curse with you.
+Yes; I said curse--damn, if you wish. If you loved, this burlesque
+engagement should not stand in your way. You would elope with the man
+you love, and let property and parents' blessings----"
+
+"That would be a good way for you to get out of the muddle unscathed,
+wouldn't it?" she flashed in. "How chivalrous! Why don't you elope
+with some one--the dark, clinging girl--and let me free? You want me to
+suffer, not yourself. Just like you Yankees--cold-blooded icicles!"
+
+Garrison considered. "I never thought of that, honestly!" he said, with
+a laugh. "I would elope quick enough, if I had only myself to consider."
+
+"Then your dark, clinging girl is lacking in the very virtues you find
+so woefully missing in me. She won't take a risk. I cannot say I blame
+her," she added, scanning the brooding Garrison.
+
+He laughed good-humoredly. "How you must detest me! But cheer up, my
+sister in misery! You will marry the man you love, all right. Never
+fear."
+
+"Will I?" she asked enigmatically. Her eyes were half-shut, watching
+Garrison's profile. "Will I, soothsayer?"
+
+He nodded comprehensively, bitterly.
+
+"You will. One of the equations of the problem will be eliminated, and
+thus will be found the answer."
+
+"Which?" she asked softly, heel tapping gravel.
+
+"The unnecessary one, of course. Isn't it always the unnecessary one?"
+
+"You mean," she said slowly, "that you will go away?"
+
+Garrison nodded.
+
+"Of course," she added, after a pause, "the dark, clinging girl is
+waiting?"
+
+"Of course," he bantered.
+
+"It must be nice to be loved like that." Her eyes were wide and far
+away. "To have one renounce relatives, position, wealth--all, for love.
+It must be very nice, indeed."
+
+Still, Garrison was silent. He had cause to be.
+
+"Do you think it is right, fair," continued the girl slowly, her brow
+wrinkled speculatively, "to break your uncle's and aunt's hearts for the
+sake of a girl? You know how they have longed for your home-coming. How
+much you mean to them! You are all they have. Don't you think you are
+selfish--very selfish?"
+
+"I believe the Bible says to leave all and cleave unto your wife,"
+returned Garrison.
+
+"Yes. But not your intended wife."
+
+"But, you see, she is of the cleaving type."
+
+"And why this hurry? Aren't you depriving your uncle and aunt
+unnecessarily early?"
+
+"But it is the only answer, as you pointed out. You then would be free."
+
+He did not know why he was indulging in this repartee. Perhaps because
+the situation was so novel, so untenable. But a strange, new force was
+working in him that day, imparting a peculiar twist to his humor. He was
+hating himself. He was hopeless, cynical, bitter.
+
+If he could have laid hands upon that eminent lawyer, Mr. Snark, he
+would have wrung his accomplished neck to the best of his ability.
+He, Snark, must have known about this prenatal engagement. And his
+bitterness, his hopelessness, were all the more real, for already he
+knew that he cared, and cared a great deal, for this curious girl with
+the steady gray eyes and wealth of indefinite hair; cared more than he
+would confess even to himself. It seemed as if he always had cared; as
+if he had always been looking into the depths of those great gray eyes.
+They were part of a dream, the focusing-point of the misty past--forever
+out of focus.
+
+The girl had been considering his answer, and now she spoke.
+
+"Of course," she said gravely, "you are not sincere when you say your
+primal reason for leaving would be in order to set me free. Of course
+you are not sincere."
+
+"Is insincerity necessarily added to my numerous physical infirmities?"
+he bantered.
+
+"Not necessarily. But there is always the love to make a virtue of
+necessity--especially when there's some one waiting on necessity."
+
+"But did I say that would be my primal reason for leaving--setting you
+free? I thought I merely stated it as one of the following blessings
+attendant on virtue."
+
+"Equivocation means that you were not sincere. Why don't you go, then?"
+
+"Eh?" Garrison looked up sharply at the tone of her voice.
+
+"Why don't you go? Hurry up! Reward the clinging girl and set me free."
+
+"Is there such a hurry? Won't you let me ferret out a pair of pajamas,
+to say nothing of good-bys?"
+
+"How silly you are!" she said coldly, rising. "The question, then, rests
+entirely with you. Whenever you make up your mind to go--"
+
+"Couldn't we let it hang fire indefinitely? Perhaps you could learn
+to love me. Then there would be no need to go." Garrison smiled
+deliberately up into her eyes, the devil working in him.
+
+Miss Desha returned his look steadily. "And the other girl--the clinging
+one?" she asked calmly.
+
+"Oh, she could wait. If we didn't hit it off, I could fall back on her.
+I would hate to be an old bachelor."
+
+"No; I don't think it would be quite a success," said the girl
+critically. "You see, I think you are the most detestable person I ever
+met. I really pity the other girl. It's better to be an old bachelor
+than to be a young--cad."
+
+Garrison rose slowly.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+"YOU'RE BILLY GARRISON."
+
+"And what is a cad?" he asked abstractedly.
+
+"One who shames his birth and position by his breeding."
+
+"And no question of dishonesty enters into it?" He could not say why
+he asked. "It is not, then, a matter of moral ethics, but of
+mere--well----"
+
+"Sensitiveness," she finished dryly. "I really think I prefer rank
+dishonesty, if it is offset by courtesy and good breeding. You see, I am
+not at all moral."
+
+Here Mrs. Calvert made her appearance, with a book and sunshade. She was
+a woman whom a sunshade completed.
+
+"I hope you two have not been quarreling," she observed. "It is too nice
+a day for that. I was watching the slaughter of the innocents on the
+tennis-court. Really, you play a wretched game, William."
+
+"So I have been informed," replied Garrison. "It is quite a relief to
+have so many people agree with me for once."
+
+"In this instance you can believe them," commented the girl. She turned
+to Mrs. Calvert. "Whose ravings are you going to listen to now?" she
+asked, taking the book Mrs. Calvert carried.
+
+"A matter of duty," laughed the older woman. "No; it's not a novel. It
+came this morning. The major wishes me to assimilate it and impart
+to him its nutritive elements--if it contains any. He is so miserably
+busy--doing nothing, as usual. But it is a labor of love. If we women
+are denied children, we must interest ourselves in other things."
+
+"Oh!" exclaimed the girl, with interest; "it's the years record of the
+track!" She was thumbing over the leaves. "I'd love to read it! May
+I when you've done? Thank you. Why, here's Sysonby, Gold Heels, The
+Picket--dear old Picket! Kentucky's pride! And here's Sis. Remember Sis?
+The Carter Handicap--"
+
+She broke off suddenly and turned to the silent Garrison. "Did you go
+much to the track up North?" She was looking straight at him.
+
+"I--I--that is--why, yes, of course," he murmured vaguely. "May I see
+it?"
+
+He took the book from her unwilling hand. A full-page photograph of
+Sis was confronting him. He studied it long and carefully, passing a
+troubled hand nervously over his forehead.
+
+"I--I think I've seen her," he said, at length, looking up vacantly.
+"Somehow, she seems familiar."
+
+Again he fell to studying the graceful lines of the thoroughbred,
+oblivious of his audience.
+
+"She is a Southern horse," commented Mrs. Calvert. "Rather she was.
+Of course you-all heard of her poisoning? It never said whether she
+recovered. Do you know?"
+
+Garrison glanced up quickly, and met Sue Desha's unwavering stare.
+
+"Why, I believe I did hear that she was poisoned, or something to that
+effect, now that you mention it." His eyes were still vacant.
+
+"You look as if you had seen a ghost," laughed Sue, her eyes on the
+magnolia-tree.
+
+He laughed somewhat nervously. "I--I've been thinking."
+
+"Is the major going in for the Carter this year?" asked the girl,
+turning to Mrs. Calvert. "Who will he run--Dixie?"
+
+"I think so. She is the logical choice." Mrs. Calvert was nervously
+prodding the gravel with her sunshade. "Sometimes I wish he would give
+up all ideas of it."
+
+"I think father is responsible for that. Since Rogue won the last
+Carter, father is horse-mad, and has infected all his neighbors."
+
+"Then it will be friend against friend," laughed Mrs. Calvert. "For, of
+course, the colonel will run Rogue again this year--"
+
+"I--I don't think so." The girl's face was sober. "That is," she added
+hastily, "I don't know. Father is still in New York. I think his initial
+success has spoiled him. Really, he is nothing more than a big child."
+She laughed affectedly. Mrs. Calvert's quiet, keen eyes were on her.
+
+"Racing can be carried to excess, like everything," said the older
+woman, at length. "I suppose the colonel will bring home with him this
+Mr. Waterbury you were speaking of?"
+
+The girl nodded. There was silence, each member of the trio evidently
+engrossed with thoughts that were of moment.
+
+Mrs. Calvert was idly thumbing over the race-track annual. "Here is a
+page torn out," she observed absently. "I wonder what it was? A thing
+like that always piques my curiosity. I suppose the major wanted it for
+reference. But then he hasn't seen the book yet. I wonder who wanted it?
+Let me--yes, it's ended here. Oh, it must have been the photograph and
+record of that jockey, Billy Garrison! Remember him? What a brilliant
+career he had! One never hears of him nowadays. I wonder what became of
+him?"
+
+"Billy Garrison?" echoed Garrison slowly, "Why--I--I think I've heard of
+him--"
+
+He was cut short by a laugh from the girl. "Oh, you're good! Why, his
+name used to be a household word. You should have heard it. But, then, I
+don't suppose you ever went to the track. Those who do don't forget."
+
+Mrs. Calvert walked slowly away. "Of course you'll stay for lunch, Sue,"
+she called back. "And a canter might get up an appetite. William, I
+meant to tell you before this that the major has reserved a horse for
+your use. He is mild and thoroughly broken. Crimmins will show him to
+you in the stable. You must learn to ride. You'll find riding-clothes
+in your room, I think. I recommend an excellent teacher in Sue. Good-by,
+and don't get thrown."
+
+"Are you willing?" asked the girl curiously.
+
+Garrison's heart was pounding strangely. His mouth was dry. "Yes, yes,"
+he said eagerly.
+
+The tight-faced cockney, Crimmins, was in the stable when Garrison,
+in riding-breeches, puttee leggings, etc., entered. Four names were
+whirling over and over in his brain ever since they had been first
+mentioned. Four names--Sis, Waterbury, Garrison, and Crimmins. He
+did not know whey they should keep recurring with such maddening
+persistency. And yet how familiar they all seemed!
+
+Crimmins eyed him askance as he entered.
+
+"Goin' for a canter, sir? Ho, yuss; this 'ere is the 'orse the master
+said as 'ow you were to ride, sir. It don't matter which side yeh
+get on. 'E's as stiddy-goin' as a alarum clock. Ho, yuss. I calls 'im
+Waterbury Watch--partly because I 'appen to 'ave a brother wot's trainer
+for Mr. Waterbury, the turfman, sir."
+
+Crimmins shifted his cud with great satisfaction at this uninterrupted
+flow of loquacity and brilliant humor. Garrison was looking the animal
+over instinctively, his hands running from hock to withers and back
+again.
+
+"How old is he?" he asked absently.
+
+"Three years, sir. Ho, yuss. Thoroughbred. Cast-off from the Duryea
+stable. By Sysonby out of Hamburg Belle. Won the Brighton Beach
+overnight sweepstakes in nineteen an' four. Ho, yuss. Just a little off
+his oats, but a bloomin' good 'orse."
+
+Garrison turned, speaking mechanically. "I wonder do you think I'm a
+fool! Sysonby himself won the Brighton sweepstakes in nineteen-four.
+It was the beginning of his racing career, and an easy win. This animal
+here is a plug; an out-and-out plug of the first water. He never
+saw Hamburg Belle or Sysonby--they never mated. This plug's a
+seven-year-old, and he couldn't do seven furlongs in seven weeks. He
+never was class, and never could be. I don't want to ride a cow, I want
+a horse. Give me that two-year-old black filly with the big shoulders.
+Whose is she?"
+
+Crimmins shifted the cud again to hide his astonishment at Garrison's
+sudden _savoir-faire_.
+
+"She's wicked, sir. Bought for the missus, but she ain't broken yet."
+
+"She hasn't been handled right. Her mouth's hard, but her temper's even.
+I'll ride her," said Garrison shortly.
+
+"Have to wear blinkers, sir."
+
+"No, I won't. Saddle her. Hurry up. Shorten the stirrup. There, that's
+right. Stand clear."
+
+Crimmins eyed Garrison narrowly as he mounted. He was quite prepared to
+run with a clothes-basket to pick up the remains. But Garrison was up
+like a feather, high on the filly's neck, his shoulders hunched. The
+minute he felt the saddle between his knees he was at home again after a
+long, long absence. He had come into his birthright.
+
+The filly quivered for a moment, laid back her ears, and then was off.
+
+"Cripes!" ejaculated the veracious Crimmins, as wide-eyed he watched the
+filly fling gravel down the drove, "'e's got a seat like Billy Garrison
+himself. 'E can ride, that kid. An' 'e knows 'orse-flesh. Blimy if 'e
+don't! If Garrison weren't down an' out I'd be ready to tyke my Alfred
+David it were 'is bloomin' self. An' I thought 'e was a dub! Ho,
+yuss--me!"
+
+Moralizing on the deceptiveness of appearances, Crimmins fortified
+himself with another slab of cut-plug.
+
+Miss Desha, up on a big bay gelding with white stockings, was waiting on
+the Logan Pike, where the driveway of Calvert House swept into it.
+
+"Do you know that you're riding Midge, and that she's a hard case?" she
+said ironically, as they cantered off together. "I'll bet you're thrown.
+Is she the horse the major reserved for you? Surely not."
+
+"No," said Garrison plaintively, "they picked me out a cow--a nice,
+amiable cow; speedy as a traction-engine, and with as much action. This
+is a little better."
+
+The girl was silent, eyeing him steadily through narrowed lids.
+
+"You've never ridden before?"
+
+"Um-m-m," said Garrison; "why, yes, I suppose so." He laughed in sudden
+joy. "It feels so good," he confided.
+
+"You remind me of a person in a dream," she said, after a little, still
+watching him closely. "Nothing seems real to you--your past, I mean. You
+only think you have done this and that."
+
+He was silent, biting his lip.
+
+"Come on, I'll race you," she cried suddenly. "To that big poplar down
+there. See it? About two furlongs. I'll give you twenty yards' start.
+Don't fall off."
+
+"I gave, never took, handicaps." The words came involuntarily to
+Garrison's surprise. "Come on; even up," he added hurriedly. "Ready?"
+
+"Yes. Let her out."
+
+The big bay gelding was off first, with the long, heart-breaking stride
+that eats up the ground. The girl's laugh floated back tantalizingly
+over her shoulder. Garrison hunched in the saddle, a smile on his lips.
+He knew the quality of the flesh under him, and that it would not be
+absent at the call.
+
+"Tote in behind, girlie. He got the jump on you. That's it. Nip his
+heels." The seconds flew by like the trees; the big poplar rushed up.
+"Now, now. Make a breeze, make a breeze," sang out Garrison at the
+quarter minute; and like a long, black streak of smoke the filly hunched
+past the gelding, leaving it as if anchored. It was the old Garrison
+finish which had been track-famous once upon a time, and as Garrison
+eased up his hard-driven mount a queer feeling of exultation swelled his
+heart; a feeling which he could not quite understand.
+
+"Could I have been a jockey once?" he kept asking himself over and over.
+"I wonder could I have been! I wonder!"
+
+The next moment the gelding had ranged up alongside.
+
+"I'll bet that was close to twenty-four, the track record," said
+Garrison unconsciously. "Pretty fair for dead and lumpy going, eh?
+Midge is a comer, all right. Good weight-carrying sprinter. I fancy that
+gelding. Properly ridden he would have given me a hard ride. We were
+even up on weight."
+
+"And so you think I cannot ride properly!" added the girl quietly,
+arranging her wind-blown hair.
+
+"Oh, yes. But women can't really ride class, you know. It isn't in
+them."
+
+She laughed a little. "I'm satisfied now. You know I was at the Carter
+Handicap last year."
+
+"Yes?" said Garrison, unmoved. He met her eyes fairly.
+
+"Yes, you know Rogue, father's horse, won. They say Sis, the favorite,
+had the race, but was pulled in the stretch." She was smiling a little.
+
+"Indeed?" murmured Garrison, with but indifferent interest.
+
+She glanced at him sharply, then fell to pleating the gelding's mane.
+"Um-m-m," she added softly. "Billy Garrison, you know, rode Sis."
+
+"Oh, did he?"
+
+"Yes. And, do you know, his seat was identical with yours?" She turned
+and eyed him steadily.
+
+"I'm flattered."
+
+"Yes," she continued dreamily, the smile at her lips; "it's funny, of
+course, but Billy Garrison used to be my hero. We silly girls all have
+one."
+
+"Oh, well," observed Garrison, "I dare say any number of girls loved
+Billy Garrison. Popular idol, you know----"
+
+"I dare say," she echoed dryly. "Possibly the dark, clinging kind."
+
+He eyed her wonderingly, but she was looking very innocently at the
+peregrinating chipmunk.
+
+"And it was so funny," she ran on, as if she had not heard his
+observation nor made one herself. "Coming home in the train from the
+Aqueduct the evening of the handicap, father left me for a moment to go
+into the smoking-car. And who do you think should be sitting opposite
+me, two seats ahead, but--Who do you think?" Again she turned and held
+his eyes.
+
+"Why--some long-lost girl-chum, I suppose," said Garrison candidly.
+
+She laughed; a laugh that died and was reborn and died again in a
+throaty gurgle. "Why, no, it was Billy Garrison himself. And I was being
+annoyed by a beast of a man, when Mr. Garrison got up, ordered the beast
+out of the seat beside me, and occupied it himself, saying it was his.
+It was done so beautifully. And he did not try to take advantage of his
+courtesy in the least. And then guess what happened." Still her eyes
+held his.
+
+"Why," answered Garrison vaguely, "er--let me see. It seems as if I had
+heard of that before somewhere. Let me see. Probably it got into the
+papers--No, I cannot remember. It has gone. I have forgotten. And what
+did happen next?"
+
+"Why, father returned, saw Mr. Garrison raise his hat in answer to my
+thanks, and, thinking he had tried to scrape an acquaintance with me,
+threw him out of the seat. He did not recognize him."
+
+"That must have been a little bit tough on Garrison, eh?" laughed
+Garrison idly. "Now that you mention it, it seems as if I had heard it."
+
+"I've always wanted to apologize to Mr. Garrison, though I do not know
+him--he does not know me," said the girl softly, pleating the gelding's
+mane at a great rate. "It was all a mistake, of course. I wonder--I
+wonder if--if he held it against me!"
+
+"Oh, very likely he's forgotten all about it long ago," said Garrison
+cheerfully.
+
+She bit her lip and was silent. "I wonder," she resumed, at length, "if
+he would like me to apologize and thank him--" She broke off, glancing
+at him shyly.
+
+"Oh, well, you never met him again, did you?" asked Garrison. "So what
+does it matter? Merely an incident."
+
+They rode a furlong in absolute silence. Again the girl was the first
+to speak. "It is queer," she moralized, "how fate weaves our lives. They
+run along in threads, are interwoven for a time with others, dropped,
+and then interwoven again. And what a pattern they make!"
+
+"Meaning?" he asked absently.
+
+She tapped her lips with the palm of her little gauntlet.
+
+"That I think you are absurd."
+
+"I?" He started. "How? Why? I don't understand. What have I done now?"
+
+"Nothing. That's just it."
+
+"I don't understand."
+
+"No? Um-m-m, of course it is your secret. I am not trying to force a
+confidence. You have your own reasons for not wishing your uncle and
+aunt to know. But I never believed that Garrison threw the Carter
+Handicap. Never, never, never. I--I thought you could trust me. That is
+all."
+
+"I don't understand a word--not a syllable," said Garrison restlessly.
+"What is it all about?"
+
+The girl laughed, shrugging her shoulders. "Oh, nothing at all. The
+return of a prodigal. Only I have a good memory for faces. You have
+changed, but not very much. I only had to see you ride to be certain.
+But I suspected from the start. You see, I admit frankly that you once
+were my hero. There is only one Billy Garrison."
+
+"I don't see the moral to the parable." He shook his head hopelessly.
+
+"No?" She flushed and bit her lip. "William C. Dagget, you're Billy
+Garrison, and you know it!" she said sharply, turning and facing him.
+"Don't try to deny it. You are, are, are! I know it. You took that name
+because you didn't wish your relatives to know who you were. Why don't
+you 'fess up? What is the use of concealing it? You've nothing to
+be ashamed of. You should be proud of your record. I'm proud of it.
+Proud--that--that--well, that I rode a race with you to-day. You're
+hiding your identity; afraid of what your uncle and aunt might
+say--afraid of that Carter Handicap affair. As if we didn't know you
+always rode as straight as a string." Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes
+flashing.
+
+Garrison eyed her steadily. His face was white, his breath coming hot
+and hard. Something was beating--beating in his brain as if striving to
+jam through. Finally he shook his head.
+
+"No, you're wrong. It's a case of mistaken identity. I am not Garrison."
+
+Her gray eyes bored into his. "You really mean that--Billy?"
+
+"I do."
+
+"On your word of honor? By everything you hold most sacred? Take your
+time in answering."
+
+"It wouldn't matter if I waited till the resurrection. I can't change
+myself. I'm not Garrison. Faith of a gentleman, I'm not. Honestly, Sue."
+He laughed a little nervously.
+
+Again her gray eyes searched his. She sighed. "Of course I take your
+word."
+
+She fumbled in her bosom and brought forth a piece of paper, carefully
+smoothing out its crumpled surface. Without a word she handed it to
+Garrison, and he spread it out on his filly's mane. It was a photograph
+of a jockey--Billy Garrison. The face was more youthful, care-free.
+Otherwise it was a fair likeness.
+
+"You'll admit it looks somewhat like you," said Sue, with great dryness.
+
+Garrison studied it long and carefully. "Yes--I do," he murmured, in a
+perplexed tone. "A double. Funny, isn't it? Where did you get it?" She
+laughed a little, flushing.
+
+"I was silly enough to think you were one and the same, and that you
+wished to conceal your identity from your relatives. So I made occasion
+to steal it from the book your aunt was about to read. Remember? It was
+the leaf she thought the major had abstracted."
+
+"I must thank you for your kindness, even though it went astray. May I
+have it?"
+
+"Ye-es. And you are sure you are not the original?"
+
+"I haven't the slightest recollection of being Billy Garrison,"
+reiterated Billy Garrison, wearily and truthfully.
+
+The ride home was mostly one of silence. Both were thinking. As they
+came within sight of Calvert House the girl turned to him:
+
+"There is one thing you can do--ride. Like glory. Where did you more
+than learn?"
+
+"Must have been born with me."
+
+"What's bred in the bone will come out in the blood," she quoted
+enigmatically. She was smiling in a way that made Garrison vaguely
+uncomfortable.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+SNARK SHOWS HIS FANGS.
+
+Alone in his room that night Garrison endeavored to focus the stray
+thoughts, suspicions that the day's events had set running through his
+brain. All Sue Desha had said, and had meant without saying, had been
+photographed on the sensitized plate of his memory--that plate on which
+the negatives of the past were but filmy shadows. Now, of them all, the
+same Garrison was on the sky-line of his imagination.
+
+Could it be possible that Billy Garrison and he were one and the same?
+And then that incident of the train. Surely he had heard it before,
+somewhere in the misty long ago. It seemed, too, as if it had occurred
+coincidently with the moment he had first looked into those gray eyes.
+He laughed nervously to himself.
+
+"If I was Garrison, whoever he was, I wonder what kind of a person I
+was! They speak of him as if he had been some one--And then Mrs. Calvert
+said he had disappeared. Perhaps I am Garrison."
+
+Nervously he brought forth the page from the race-track annual Sue had
+given him, and studied it intently. "Yes, it does look like me. But it
+may be only a double; a coincidence." He racked his brain for a stray
+gleam of retrospect, but it was not forthcoming. "It's no use," he
+sighed wearily, "my life began when I left the hospital. And if I was
+Garrison, surely I would have been recognized by some one in New York.
+
+"Hold on," he added eagerly, "I remember the first day I was out a man
+caught me by the arm on Broadway and said: 'Hello, Billy!' Let me think.
+This Garrison's name was Billy. The initials on my underwear were W.
+G.--might be William Garrison instead of the William Good I took. But if
+so, how did I come to be in the hospital without a friend in the world?
+The doctors knew nothing of me. Haven't I any parents or relatives--real
+relatives, not the ones I am imposing on?"
+
+He sat on the bed endeavoring to recall some of his past life; even the
+faintest gleam. Then absently he turned over the photograph he held. On
+the reserve side of the leaf was the record of Billy Garrison. Garrison
+studied it eagerly.
+
+"Born in eighty-two. Just my age, I guess--though I can't swear how old
+I am, for I don't know. Stable-boy for James R. Keene. Contract bought
+by Henry Waterbury. Highest price ever paid for bought-up contract.
+H'm! Garrison was worth something. First win on the Gravesend track when
+seventeen. A native of New York City. H'm! Rode two Suburban winners;
+two Brooklyn Handicaps; Carter Handicap; the Grand Prix, France; the
+Metropolitan Handicap; the English Derby--Oh, shucks! I never did all
+those things; never in God's world," he grunted wearily. "I wouldn't be
+here if I had. It's all a mistake. I knew it was. Sue was kidding me.
+And yet--they say the real Billy Garrison has disappeared. That's funny,
+too."
+
+He took a few restless paces about the room. "I'll go down and pump
+the major," he decided finally. "Maybe unconsciously he'll help me
+to remember. I'm in a fog. He ought to know Garrison. If I am Billy
+Garrison--then by my present rank deception I've queered a good record.
+But I know I'm not. I'm a nobody. A dishonest nobody to boot."
+
+Major Calvert was seated by his desk in the great old-fashioned library,
+intently scanning various racing-sheets and the multitudinous data of
+the track. A greater part of his time went to the cultivation of his one
+hobby--the track and horses--for by reason of his financial standing,
+having large cotton and real-estate holdings in the State, he could
+afford to use business as a pastime.
+
+He spent his mornings and afternoons either in his stables or at the
+extensive training-quarters of his stud, where he was as indefatigable a
+rail-bird as any pristine stable-boy.
+
+A friendly rivalry had long existed between his neighbor and friend,
+Colonel Desha, and himself in the matter of horse-flesh. The colonel was
+from Kentucky--Kentucky origin--and his boast was that his native State
+could not be surpassed either in regard to the quality of its horses
+or women. And, though chivalrous, the colonel always mentioned "women"
+last.
+
+"Just look at Rogue and my daughter, Sue, suh," he was wont to say with
+pardonable pride. "Thoroughbreds both, suh."
+
+It was a matter of record that the colonel, though less financially
+able, was a better judge of horses than his friend and rival, the major,
+and at the various county meets it was Major Calvert who always ran
+second to Colonel Desha's first.
+
+The colonel's faith in Rogue had been vindicated at the last Carter
+Handicap, and his owner was now stimulating his ambition for higher
+flights. And thus far, the major, despite all his expenditures and
+lavish care, could only show one county win for his stable. His friend's
+success had aroused him, and deep down in his secret heart he vowed he
+would carry off the next prize Colonel Desha entered for, even if it was
+one of the classic handicaps itself.
+
+Dixie, a three-year-old filly whom he had recently purchased, showed
+unmistakable evidences of winning class in her try-outs, and her owner
+watched her like a hawk, satisfaction in his heart, biding the time when
+he might at last show Kentucky that her sister State, Virginia, could
+breed a horse or two.
+
+"I'll keep Dixie's class a secret," he was wont to chuckle to himself,
+as, perched on the rail in all sorts of weather, he clicked off her
+time. "I think it is the Carter my learned friend will endeavor to
+capture again. I'm sure Dixie can give Rogue five seconds in seven
+furlongs--and a beating. That is, of course," he always concluded, with
+good-humored vexation, "providing the colonel doesn't pick up in New
+York an animal that can give Dixie ten seconds. He has a knack of going
+from better to best."
+
+Now Major Calvert glanced up with a smile as Garrison entered.
+
+"I thought you were in bed, boy. Leave late hours to age. You're
+looking better these days. I think Doctor Blandly's open-air physic
+is first-rate, eh? By the way, Crimmins tells me you were out on Midge
+to-day, and that you ride--well, like Billy Garrison himself. Of course
+he always exaggerates, but you didn't say you could ride at all. Midge
+is a hard animal." He eyed Garrison with some curiosity. "Where did you
+learn to ride? I thought you had had no time nor means for it."
+
+"Oh, I merely know a horse's tail from his head," laughed Garrison
+indifferently. "Speaking of Garrison, did you ever see him ride, major?"
+
+"How many times have I asked you to say uncle, not major?" reproved
+Major Calvert. "Don't you feel as if you were my nephew, eh? If there's
+anything I've left undone--"
+
+"You've been more than kind," blurted out Garrison uncomfortably. "More
+than good--uncle." He was hating himself. He could not meet the major's
+kindly eyes.
+
+"Tut, tut, my boy, no fine speeches. Apropos of this Garrison, why are
+you so interested in him? Wish to emulate him, eh? Yes, I've seen him
+ride, but only once, when he was a bit of a lad. I fancy Colonel Desha
+is the one to give you his merits. You know Garrison's old owner, Mr.
+Waterbury, is returning with the colonel. He will be his guest for a
+week or so."
+
+"Oh," said Garrison slowly. "And who is this Garrison riding for now?"
+
+"I don't know. I haven't followed him. It seems as if I heard there
+was some disagreement or other between him and Mr. Waterbury; over that
+Carter Handicap, I think. By the way, if you take an interest in horses,
+and Crimmins tells me you have an eye for class, you rascal, come out
+to the track with me to-morrow. I've got a filly which I think will give
+the colonel's Rogue a hard drive. You know, if the colonel enters for
+the next Carter, I intend to contest it with him--and win." He chuckled.
+
+"Then you don't know anything about this Garrison?" persisted Garrison
+slowly.
+
+"Nothing more than I've said. He was a first-class boy in his time. A
+boy I'd like to have seen astride of Dixie. Such stars come up quickly
+and disappear as suddenly. The life's against them, unless they possess
+a hard head. But Mr. Waterbury, when he arrives, can, I dare say, give
+you all the information you wish. By the way," he added, a twinkle in
+his eye, "what do you think of the colonel's other thoroughbred? I mean
+Miss Desha?"
+
+Garrison felt the hot blood mounting to his face. "I--I--that is, I--I
+like her. Very much indeed." He laughed awkwardly, his eyes on the
+parquet floor.
+
+"I knew you would, boy. There's good blood in that girl--the best in the
+States. Perhaps a little odd, eh? But, remember, straight speech means a
+straight mind. You see, the families have always been all in all to each
+other; the colonel is a school-chum of mine--we're never out of school
+in this world--and my wife was a nursery-chum of Sue's mother--she was
+killed on the hunting-field ten years ago. Your aunt and I have always
+regarded the girl as our own. God somehow neglected to give us a
+chick--probably we would have neglected Him for it. We love children. So
+we've cottoned all the more to Sue."
+
+"I understand that Sue and I are intended for each other," observed
+Garrison, a half-cynical smile at his lips.
+
+"God bless my soul! How did you guess?"
+
+"Why, she said so."
+
+Major Calvert chuckled. "God bless my soul again! That's Sue all over.
+She'd ask the devil himself for a glass of water if she was in the hot
+place, and insist upon having ice in it. 'Pon my soul she would. And
+what does she think of you? Likes you, eh?"
+
+"No, she doesn't," replied Garrison quietly.
+
+"Tell you as much, eh?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Again Major Calvert chuckled. "Well, she told me different. Oh, yes,
+she did, you rascal. And I know Sue better than you do. Family wishes
+wouldn't weigh with her a particle if she didn't like the man. No, they
+wouldn't. She isn't the kind to give her hand where her heart isn't. She
+likes you. It remains with you to make her love you."
+
+"And that's impossible," added Garrison grimly to himself. "If she only
+knew! Love? Lord!"
+
+"Wait a minute," said the major, as Garrison prepared to leave. "Here's
+a letter that came for you to-day. It got mixed up in my mail by
+accident." He opened the desk-drawer and handed a square envelope to
+Garrison, who took it mechanically. "No doubt you've a good many friends
+up North," added the major kindly. "Have 'em down here for as long as
+they can stay. Calvert House is open night and day. I do not want you
+to think that because you are here you have to give up old friends. I'm
+generous enough to share you with them, but--no elopements, mind."
+
+"I think it's merely a business letter," replied Garrison indifferently,
+hiding his burning curiosity. He did not know who his correspondent
+could possibly be. Something impelled him to wait until he was alone in
+his room before opening it. It was from the eminent lawyer, Theobald D.
+Snark.
+
+"BELOVED IMPOSTOR: '_Ars longa, vita brevis_,' as the philosopher has
+truly said, which in the English signifies that I cannot afford to wait
+for the demise of the reverend and guileless major before I garner the
+second fruits of my intelligence. Ten thousand is a mere pittance in
+New York--one's appetite develops with cultivation, and mine has been
+starved for years--and I find I require an income. Fifty a week or
+thereabouts will come in handy for the present. I know you have access
+to the major's pocketbook, it being situated on the same side as his
+heart, and I will expect a draft by following mail. He will be glad to
+indulge the sporting blood of youth. If I cannot share the bed of roses,
+I can at least fatten on the smell. I would have to be compelled to tell
+the major what a rank fraud and unsurpassed liar his supposed nephew
+is. So good a liar that he even imposed upon me. Of course I thought you
+were the real nephew, and it horrifies me to know that you are a fraud.
+But, remember, silence is golden. If you feel any inclination of getting
+fussy, remember that I am a lawyer, and that I can prove I took your
+claim in good faith. Also, the Southerners are notoriously hot-tempered,
+deplorably addicted to firearms, and I don't think you would look a
+pretty sight if you happened to get shot full of buttonholes."
+
+The letter was unsigned, typewritten, and on plain paper. But Garrison
+knew whom it was from. It was the eminent lawyer's way not to place
+damaging evidence in the hands of a prospective enemy.
+
+"This means blackmail," commented Garrison, carefully replacing the
+letter in its envelope. "And it serves me right. I wonder do I look
+silly. I must; for people take me for a fool."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+THE COLONEL'S CONFESSION.
+
+Garrison did not sleep that night. His position was clearly credited
+and debited in the ledger of life. He saw it; saw that the balance was
+against him. He must go--but he could not, would not. He decided to take
+the cowardly, half-way measure. He had not the courage for renunciation.
+He would stay until this pot of contumacious fact came to the boil,
+overflowed, and scalded him out.
+
+He was not afraid of the eminent Mr. Snark. Possession is in
+reality ten-tenths of the law. The lawyer had cleverly proven
+his--Garrison's--claim. He would be still more clever if he could
+disprove it. A lie can never be branded truth by a liar. How could
+he disprove it? How could his shoddy word weigh against Garrison's,
+fashioned from the whole cloth and with loyalty, love on Garrison's
+side?
+
+No, the letter was only a bluff. Snark would not run the risk of
+publicly smirching himself--for who would believe his protestations of
+innocency?--losing his license at the bar together with the certainty of
+a small fortune, for the sake of over-working a tool that might snap in
+his hand or cut both ways. So Garrison decided to disregard the letter.
+
+But with Waterbury it was a different proposition. Garrison was unaware
+what his own relations had been with his former owner, but even if they
+had been the most cordial, which from Major Calvert's accounts they had
+not been, that fact would not prevent Waterbury divulging the rank fraud
+Garrison was perpetrating.
+
+The race-track annual had said Billy Garrison had followed the ponies
+since boyhood. Waterbury would know his ancestry, if any one would.
+It was only a matter of time until exposure came, but still Garrison
+determined to procrastinate as long as possible. He clung fiercely,
+with the fierce tenacity of despair, to his present life. He could not
+renounce it all--not yet.
+
+Two hopes, secreted in his inner consciousness, supported indecision.
+One: Perhaps Waterbury might not recognize him, or perhaps he could
+safely keep out of his way. The second: Perhaps he himself was not Billy
+Garrison at all; for coincidence only said that he was, and a very
+small modicum of coincidence at that. This fact, if true, would cry his
+present panic groundless.
+
+On the head of conscience, Garrison did not touch. He smothered it. All
+that he forced himself to sense was that he was "living like a white man
+for once"; loving as he never thought he could love.
+
+The reverse, unsightly side of the picture he would not so much as
+glance at. Time enough when he was again flung out on that merciless,
+unrecognizing world he had come to loathe; loathe and dread. When that
+time came it would taste exceeding bitter in his mouth. All the more
+reason, then, to let the present furnish sweet food for retrospect; food
+that would offset the aloes of retribution. Thus Garrison philosophized.
+
+And, though but vaguely aware of the fact, this philosophy of
+procrastination (but another form of selfishness) was the spawn of
+a supposition; the supposition that his love for Sue Desha was not
+returned; that it was hopeless, absurd. He was not injuring her. He was
+the moth, she the flame. He did not realize that the moth can extinguish
+the candle.
+
+He had learned some of life's lessons, though the most difficult had
+been forgotten, but he had yet to understand the mighty force of love;
+that it contains no stagnant quality. Love, reciprocal love, uplifts.
+But there must be that reciprocal condition to cling to. For love is
+not selfishness on a grand scale, but a glorified pride. And the fine
+differentiation between these two words is the line separating the love
+that fouls from the love that cleanses.
+
+And even as Garrison was fighting out the night with his sleepless
+thoughts, Sue Desha was in the same restless condition. Mr. Waterbury
+had arrived. His generous snores could be heard stalking down the
+corridor from the guest-chamber. He was of the abdominal variety of the
+animal species, eating and sleeping his way through life, oblivious of
+all obstacles.
+
+Waterbury's ancestry was open to doubt. It was very vague; as vague as
+his features. It could not be said that he was brought up by his hair
+because he hadn't any to speak of. But the golden flood of money he
+commanded could not wash out certain gutter marks in his speech, person,
+and manner. That such an inmate should eat above the salt in Colonel
+Desha's home was a painful acknowledgment of the weight of necessity.
+
+What the necessity was, Sue sensed but vaguely. It was there,
+nevertheless, almost amounting to an obsession. For when the Desha and
+Waterbury type commingle there is but the one interpretation. Need
+of money or clemency in the one case; need of social introduction or
+elevation through kinship in the other.
+
+The latter was Waterbury's case. But he also loved Sue--in his own way.
+He had met her first at the Carter Handicap, and, as he confided
+to himself: "She was a spanking filly, of good stock, and with good
+straight legs."
+
+His sincere desire to "butt into the Desha family" he kept for the
+moment to himself. But as a preliminary maneuver he had intimated that
+a visit to the Desha home would not come in amiss. And the old colonel,
+for reasons he knew and Waterbury knew, thought it would be wisest to
+accede.
+
+Perhaps now the colonel was considering those reasons. His room was next
+that of his daughter, and in her listening wakefulness she had heard him
+turn restlessly in bed. Insomnia loves company as does misery. Presently
+the colonel arose, and the strong smell of Virginia tobacco and the
+monotonous pad, pad of list slippers made themselves apparent.
+
+Sue threw on a dressing-gown and entered her father's room. He was in a
+light green bathrobe, his white hair tousled like sea-foam as he passed
+and repassed his gaunt fingers through it.
+
+"I can't sleep," said the girl simply. She cuddled in a big armchair,
+her feet tucked under her.
+
+He put a hand on her shoulder. "I can't, either," he said, and laughed
+a little, as if incapable of understanding the reason. "I think late
+eating doesn't agree with me. It must have been the deviled crab."
+
+"Mr. Waterbury?" suggested Sue.
+
+"Eh?" Then Colonel Desha frowned, coughed, and finally laughed. "Still a
+child, I see," he added, with a deprecating shake of the head. "Will you
+ever grow up?"
+
+"Yes--when you recognize that I have." She pressed her cheek against the
+hand on her shoulder.
+
+Sue practically managed the entire house, looking after the servants,
+expenses, and all, but the colonel always referred to her as "my little
+girl." He was under the amiable delusion that time had left her at the
+ten-mile mark, never to return.
+
+This was one of but many defects in his vision. He was oblivious of
+materialistic facts. He was innocent of the ways of finance. He had come
+of a prodigal race of spenders, not accumulators. Away back somewhere
+in the line there must have existed what New Englanders term a "good
+provider," but that virtue had not descended from father to son. The
+original vast Desha estates decreased with every generation, seldom a
+descendant making even a spasmodic effort to replenish them. There was
+always a mortgage or sale in progress. Sometimes a lucrative as well as
+love-marriage temporarily increased the primal funds, but more often the
+opposite was the case.
+
+The Deshas, like all true Southerners, believed that love was the only
+excuse for marriage; just as most Northerners believe that labor is the
+only excuse for living. And so the colonel, with no business incentive,
+acumen, or adaptability, and with the inherited handicap of a luxurious
+living standard, made a brave onslaught on his patrimony.
+
+What the original estate was, or to what extent the colonel had
+encroached upon it, Sue never rightly knew. She had been brought up
+in the old faith that a Southerner is lord of the soil, but as she
+developed, the fact was forced home upon her that her father was not
+materialistic, and that ways and means were.
+
+Twice yearly their Kentucky estate yielded an income. As soon as she
+understood affairs, Sue took a stand which could not be shaken, even if
+the easy-going mooning colonel had exerted himself to that extent. She
+insisted upon using one-half the yearly income for household expenses;
+the other the colonel could fritter away as he chose upon his
+racing-stable and his secondary hobby--an utterly absurd stamp
+collection.
+
+Only each household knows how it meets the necessity of living. It is
+generally the mother and daughter, if there be one, who comprise the
+inner finance committee. Men are only Napoleons of finance when the
+market is strong and steady. When it becomes panicky and fluctuates and
+resolves itself into small unheroic deals, woman gets the job. For the
+world is principally a place where men work for the pleasures and
+woman has to cringe for the scraps. It may seem unchivalrous, but true
+nevertheless.
+
+Only Sue knew how she compelled one dollar to bravely do the duty of
+two. Appearances are never so deceitful as in the household where want
+is apparently scorned. Sue was of the breed who, if necessary, could
+raise absolute pauperism to the peerage. And if ever a month came in
+which she would lie awake nights, developing the further elasticity of
+currency, certainly her neighbors knew aught of it, and her father least
+of all.
+
+The colonel recommenced his pacing. Sue, hands clasped around knees,
+watched him with steady, unwinking eyes.
+
+"It's not the deviled crab, daddy," she said quietly, at length. "It's
+something else. 'Fess up. You're in trouble. I feel it. Sit down there
+and let me go halves on it. Sit down."
+
+Colonel Desha vaguely passed a hand through his hair, then, mechanically
+yielding to the superior strength and self-control of his daughter,
+eased himself into an opposite armchair.
+
+"Oh, no, you're quite wrong, quite wrong," he reiterated absently. "I'm
+only tired. Only tired, girlie. That's all. Been very busy, you know."
+And he ran on feverishly, talking about Waterbury, weights, jockeys,
+mounts--all the jargon of the turf. The dam of his mind had given way,
+and a flood of thoughts, hopes, fears came rioting forth unchecked,
+unthinkingly.
+
+His eyes were vacant, a frown dividing his white brows, the thin hand on
+the table closing and relaxing. He was not talking to his daughter, but
+to his conscience. It was the old threadbare, tattered tale--spawn of
+the Goddess fortune; a thing of misbegotten hopes and desires.
+
+The colonel, swollen with the winning of the Carter Handicap, had
+conceived the idea that he was possessor of a God-given knowledge of the
+"game." And there had been many to sustain that belief. Now, the colonel
+might know a horse, but he did not know the law of averages, of chance,
+nor did he even know how his fellow man's heart is fashioned. Nor that
+track fortunes are only made by bookies or exceptionally wealthy or
+brainy owners; that a plunger comes out on top once in a million times.
+That the track, to live, must bleed "suckers" by the thousand, and that
+he, Colonel Desha, was one of the bled.
+
+He was on the wrong side of the table. The Metropolitan, Brooklyn,
+Suburban, Brighton, Futurity, and a few minor meets served to swamp
+the colonel. What Waterbury had to do with the case was not clear. The
+colonel had taken his advice time and time again only to lose. But the
+Kentucky estate had been sold, and Mr. Waterbury held the mortgage of
+the Desha home. And then, his mind emptied of its poison, the colonel
+slowly came to himself.
+
+"What--what have I been saying?" he cried tensely. He attempted a laugh,
+a denial; caught his daughter's eyes, looked into them, and then buried
+his face in his quivering hands.
+
+Sue knelt down and raised his head.
+
+"Daddy, is that--all?" she asked steadily.
+
+He did not answer. Then, man as he was, the blood came sweeping to face
+and neck.
+
+"I mean," added the girl quietly, her eyes, steady but very kind,
+holding his, "I had word from the National this morning saying that our
+account, the--the balance, was overdrawn--"
+
+"Yes--I drew against it," whispered Colonel Desha. He would not meet
+her eyes; he who had looked every man in the face. The fire caught him
+again. "I had to, girlie, I had to," he cried over and over again. "I
+intended telling you. We'll make it up a hundred times over. It was my
+only chance. It's all up on the books--up on The Rogue. He'll win the
+Carter as sure as there's a God in heaven. It's a ten-thousand stake,
+and I've had twenty on him--the balance--your balance, girlie. I can pay
+off Waterbury--" The fire died away as quickly. Somehow in the stillness
+of the room, against the look in the girl's eyes, words seemed so
+pitifully futile, so blatant, so utterly trivial.
+
+Sue's face was averted, eyes on floor, hands tensely clasping those of
+her father. Absolute stillness held the room. The colonel was staring at
+the girl's bent head.
+
+"It's--it's all right, girlie. All right, don't fret," he murmured
+thickly. "The Rogue will win--bound to win. You don't understand--you're
+only a girl--only a child----"
+
+"Of course, Daddy," agreed Sue slowly, wide-eyed. "I'm only a child. I
+don't understand."
+
+But she understood more than her father. She was thinking of Billy
+Garrison.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+A BREATH OF THE OLD LIFE.
+
+Major Calvert's really interested desire to see his pseudo nephew
+astride a mount afforded Garrison the legitimate opportunity of keeping
+clear of Mr. Waterbury for the next few days. The track was situated
+some three miles from Calvert House--a modern racing-stable in every
+sense of the word--and early the next morning Garrison started forth,
+accompanied by the indefatigable major.
+
+Curiosity was stirring in the latter's heart. He had long been searching
+for a fitting rider for the erratic and sensitive Dixie--whimsical and
+uncertain of taste as any woman--and though he could not bring himself
+to believe in Crimmins' eulogy of Garrison's riding ability, he was
+anxious to ascertain how far the trainer had erred.
+
+Crimmins was not given to airing his abortive sense of humor overmuch,
+and he was a sound judge of horse and man. If he was right--but the
+major had to laugh at such a possibility. Garrison to ride like that!
+He who had confessed he had never thrown a leg over a horse before! By a
+freak of nature he might possess the instinct but not the ability.
+
+Perhaps he even might possess the qualifications of an exercise-boy; he
+had the build--a stripling who possessed both sinew and muscle, but who
+looked fatty tissue. But the major well knew that it is one thing
+to qualify as an exercise-boy and quite another to toe the mark as a
+jockey. For the former it is only necessary to have good hands, a good
+seat in the saddle, and to implicitly obey a trainer's instructions. No
+initiative is required. But it is absolutely essential that a boy
+should own all these adjuncts and many others--quickness of perception,
+unlimited daring, and alertness to make a jockey. No truer summing up
+of the necessary qualifications is there than the old and famous "Father
+Bill" Daly's doggerel and appended note:
+
+     "Just a tinge of wickedness,
+     With a touch of devil-may-care;
+     Just a bit of bone and meat,
+     With plenty of nerve to dare.
+     And, on top of all things--he must be a tough kid."
+
+And "Father Bill" Daly ought to know above all others, for he has
+trained more famous jockeys than any other man in America.
+
+There are two essential points in the training of race-horses--secrecy
+and ability. Crimmins possessed both, but the scheduled situation of the
+Calvert stables rendered the secret "trying out" of racers before track
+entry unnecessary. It is only fair to state that if Major Calvert had
+left his trainer to his own judgment his stable would have made a better
+showing than it had. But the major's disposition and unlimited time
+caused him more often than not to follow the racing paraphrase: "Dubs
+butt in where trainers fear to tread."
+
+He was so enthusiastic and ignorant over horses that he insisted upon
+campaigns that had only the merit of good intentions to recommend
+them. Some highly paid trainers throw up their positions when their
+millionaire owners assume the role of dictator, but Crimmins very seldom
+lost his temper. The major was so boyishly good-hearted and bull-headed
+that Crimmins had come to view his master's racing aspirations almost as
+an expensive joke.
+
+However, it seemed that the Carter Handicap and the winning by his
+very good friend and neighbor, Colonel Desha, had stuck firmly in
+Major Calvert's craw. He promised to faithfully follow his trainer's
+directions and leave for the nonce the preparatory training entirely in
+his hands.
+
+It was decided now that Garrison should try out the fast black filly
+Dixie, just beginning training for the Carter. She had a hundred and
+twenty-five pounds of grossness to boil down before making track weight,
+but the opening spring handicap was five months off, and Crimmins
+believed in the "slow and sure" adage. Major Calvert, his old
+weather-beaten duster fluttering in the wind, took his accustomed perch
+on the rail, while Garrison prepared to get into racing-togs.
+
+The blood was pounding in Garrison's heart as he lightly swung up on the
+sleek black filly. The old, nameless longing, the insistent thought
+that he had done all this before--to the roar of thousands of
+voices--possessed him.
+
+Instinctively he understood his mount; her defects, her virtues.
+Instinctively he sensed that she was not a "whip horse." A touch of the
+whalebone and she would balk--stop dead in her stride. He had known such
+horses before, generally fillies.
+
+As soon as Garrison's feet touched stirrups all the condensed, colossal
+knowledge of track and horse-flesh, gleaned by the sweating labor of
+years, came tingling to his finger-tips. Judgment, instinct, daring,
+nerve, were all his; at his beck and call; serving their master. He felt
+every inch the veteran he was--though he knew it not. It was not a freak
+of nature. He had worked, worked hard for knowledge, and it would not be
+denied. He felt as he used to feel before he had "gone back."
+
+Garrison took Dixie over the seven furlongs twice, and in a manner,
+despite her grossness, the mare had never been taken before. She ran
+as easily, as relentlessly, without a hitch or break, as fine-spun silk
+slips through a shuttle. She was high-strung, sensitive to a degree, but
+Garrison understood her, and she answered his knowledge loyally.
+
+It was impressive riding to those who knew the filly's irritability,
+uncertainty. Clean-cut veteran horsemanship, with horse and rider as
+one; a mechanically precise pace, heart-breaking for a following field.
+The major slowly climbed off the rail, mechanically eyeing his watch. He
+was unusually quiet, but there was a light in his eyes that forecasted
+disaster for his very good friend and neighbor, Colonel Desha, and The
+Rogue. It is even greater satisfaction, did we but acknowledge it, to
+turn the tables on a friend than on a foe.
+
+"Boy," he said impressively, laying a hand on Garrison's shoulder and
+another on Dixie's flank, "I've been looking for some one to ride Dixie
+in the Carter--some one who could ride; ride and understand. I've found
+that some one in my nephew. You'll ride her--ride as no one else can.
+God knows how you learned the game--I don't. But know it you do. Nor do
+I pretend to know how you understand the filly. I don't understand it at
+all. It must be a freak of nature."
+
+"Ho, yuss!" added Crimmins quietly, his eye on the silent Garrison. "Ho,
+yuss! It must be a miracle. But I tell you, major, it ain't no miracle.
+It ain't. That boy 'as earned 'is class. 'E could understand any 'orse.
+'E's earned 'is class. It don't come to a chap in the night. 'E's got to
+slave f'r it--slave 'ard. Ho, yuss! Your neffy can ride, an' 'e can s'y
+wot 'e likes, but if 'e ain't modeled on Billy Garrison 'isself, then
+I'm a bloomin' bean-eating Dutchman! 'E's th' top spit of Garrison--th'
+top spit of 'im, or may I never drink agyn!"
+
+There was sincerity, good feeling, and force behind the declaration, and
+the major eyed Garrison intently and with some curiosity.
+
+"Come, haven't you ridden before, eh?" he asked good-humoredly. "It's
+no disgrace, boy. Is it hard-won science, as Crimmins says, or merely an
+unbelievable and curious freak of nature, eh?"
+
+Garrison looked the major in the eye. His heart was pounding.
+
+"If I've ever ridden a mount before--I've never known it," he said, with
+conviction and truth.
+
+Crimmins shook his head in hopeless despair. The major was too
+enthusiastic to quibble over how the knowledge was gained. It was there
+in overflowing abundance. That was enough. Besides, his nephew's word
+was his bond. He would as soon think of doubting the Bible.
+
+For the succeeding days Garrison and the major haunted the track. It was
+decided that the former should wear his uncle's colors in the Carter,
+and he threw himself into the training of Dixie with all his painstaking
+energy and knowledge.
+
+He proved a valuable adjunct to Crimmins; rank was waived in the
+stables, and a sincere regard sprang up between master and man, based
+on the fundamental qualities of real manhood and a mutual passion for
+horse-flesh. And if the acid little cockney suspected that Garrison had
+ever carried a jockey's license or been track-bred, he respected the
+other's silence, and refrained from broaching the question again.
+
+Meanwhile, to all appearances, things were running in the harmonious
+groove over at the Desha home. Since the night of Mr. Waterbury's
+arrival Sue had not mentioned the subject of the overdrawn balance, and
+the colonel had not. If the girl thought her father guilty of a slight
+breach of honor, no hint of it was conveyed either in speech or manner.
+
+She was broad-minded--the breadth and depth of perfect health and a
+clean heart. If she set up a high standard for herself, it was not
+to measure others by. The judgment of man entered into no part of her
+character; least of all, the judgment of a parent.
+
+As for the colonel, it was apparent that he was not on speaking terms
+with his conscience. It made itself apparent in countless foolish little
+ways; in countless little means of placating his daughter--a favorite
+book, a song, a new saddle. These votive offerings were tendered in
+subdued silence fitting to the occasion, but Sue always lauded them to
+the skies. Nor would she let him see that she understood the contrition
+working in him. To Colonel Desha she was no longer "my little girl," but
+"my daughter." Very often we only recognize another's right and might by
+being in the wrong and weak ourselves.
+
+Every spare minute of his day--and he had many--the colonel spent in
+his stables superintending the training of The Rogue. He was infinitely
+worse than a mother with her first child. If the latter acts as if she
+invented maternity, one would have thought the colonel had fashioned the
+gelding as the horse of Troy was fashioned.
+
+The Rogue's success meant everything to him--everything in the world.
+He would be obliged to win. Colonel Desha was not one who believed in
+publishing a daily "agony column." He could hold his troubles as he
+could his drink--like a gentleman. He had not intended that Sue should
+be party to them, but that night of the confession they had caught him
+unawares. And he played the host to Mr. Waterbury as only a Southern
+gentleman can.
+
+That the turfman had motives other than mere friendship and regard
+when proffering his advice and financial assistance, the colonel never
+suspected. It was a further manifestation of his childish streak and
+his ignorance of his fellow man. His great fault was in estimating
+his neighbor by his own moral code. It had never occurred to him that
+Waterbury loved Sue, and that he had forced his assistance while helping
+to create the necessity for that assistance, merely as a means of
+lending some authority to his suit. But Waterbury possessed many likable
+qualities; he had stood friend to Colonel Desha, whatever his motives,
+and the latter honored him on his own valuation.
+
+Fear never would have given the turfman the entree to the Desha
+home; only friendship. Down South hospitality is sacred. When one has
+succeeded in entering a household he is called kin. A mutual trust and
+bond of honor exist between host and guest. The mere formula; "So-and-So
+is my guest," is a clean bill of moral health. Therefore, in whatever
+light Sue may have regarded Mr. Waterbury, her treatment of him was
+uniformly courteous and kindly.
+
+Necessarily they saw much of each other. The morning rides, formerly
+with Garrison, were now taken with Mr. Waterbury. This was owing partly
+to the former's close application to the track, partly to the courtesy
+due guest from hostess whose father is busily engaged, and in the main
+to a concrete determination on Sue's part. This intimacy with Sue Desha
+was destined to work a change in Waterbury.
+
+He had come unworthy to the Desha home. He acknowledged that to himself.
+Come with the purpose of compelling his suit, if necessary. His love
+had been the product of his animalistic nature. It was a purely sensual
+appeal. He had never known the true interpretation of love; never
+experienced the society of a womanly woman. But it is in every nature
+to respond to the highest touch; to the appeal of honor. When trust
+is reposed, fidelity answers. It did its best to answer in Waterbury's
+case. His better self was slowly awakening.
+
+Those days were wonderful, new, happy days for Waterbury. He was
+received on the footing of guest, good comrade. He was fighting to
+cross the line, searching for the courage necessary--he who had
+watched without the flicker of an eyelash a fortune lost by an inch of
+horse-flesh. And if the girl knew, she gave no sign.
+
+As for Garrison, despite his earnest attention to the track, those were
+unhappy days for him. He thought that he had voluntarily given up Sue's
+society; given it up for the sake of saving his skin; for the fear of
+meeting Waterbury. Time and time again he determined to face the turfman
+and learn the worst. Cowardice always stepped in. Presently Waterbury
+would leave for the North, and things then would be as they had been.
+
+He hated himself for his cowardice; for his compromise with
+self-respect. It was not that he valued Sue's regard so lightly. Rather
+he feared to lose the little he had by daring all. He did not know that
+Sue had given him up. Did not know that she was hurt, mortally hurt;
+that her renunciation had not been necessary; that he had not given her
+the opportunity. He had stayed away, and she wondered. There could
+be but the one answer. He must hate this tie between them; this
+parent-fostered engagement. He was thinking of the girl he had left
+up North. Perhaps it was better for her, she argued, that she had
+determined upon renunciation.
+
+Obviously Major Calvert and his wife noticed the breach in the
+Garrison-Desha entente cordiale. They credited it to some childish
+quarrel. They were wise in their generation. Old heads only muddle young
+hearts. To confer the dignity of age upon the differences of youth but
+serves to turn a mole-hill into a mountain.
+
+But one memorable evening, when the boyish and enthusiastic major and
+Garrison returned from an all-day session at the track, they found Mrs.
+Calvert in a very quiet and serious mood, which all the major's cajolery
+could not penetrate. And after dinner she and the major had a peace
+conference in the library, at the termination of which the doughty
+major's feathers were considerably agitated.
+
+Mrs. Calvert's good nature was not the good nature of the faint-hearted
+or weak-kneed. She was never at loss for words, nor the spirit to back
+them when she considered conditions demanded them. Subsequently, when
+his wife retired, the major, very red in the face, called Garrison into
+the room.
+
+"Eh, demmit, boy," he began, fussing up and down, "I've noticed, of
+course, that you and Sue don't pull in the same boat. Now, I thought it
+was due to a little tiff, as soon straightened as tangled, when pride
+once stopped goading you on. But your aunt, boy, has other ideas on the
+subject which she had been kindly imparting to me. And it seems that
+I'm entirely to blame. She says that I've caused you to neglect Sue for
+Dixie. Eh, boy, is that so?" He paused, eyeing Garrison in distress.
+
+"No, it is not," said Garrison heavily. "It is entirely my fault."
+
+The major heartily sighed his relief.
+
+"Eh, demmit, I said as much to your aunt, but she knows I'm an old
+sinner, and she has her doubts. I told her if you could neglect Sue for
+Dixie your love wasn't worth a rap. I knew there was something back of
+it. Well, you must go over to-night and straighten it out. These little
+tiffs have to be killed early--like spring chickens. Sue has her dander
+up, I tell you. She met your aunt to-day. Said flatly that she had
+broken the engagement; that it was final--"
+
+"Oh, she did?" was all Garrison could find to interrupt with.
+
+"Eh, demmit; pride, boy, pride," said the major confidently. "Now, run
+along over and apologize; scratch humble gravel--clear down to China,
+if necessary. And mind you do it right proper. Some people apologize
+by saying: 'If I've said anything I'm sorry for, I'm glad of it.' Eh,
+demmit, remember never to compete for the right with a woman. Women
+are always right. Man shouldn't be his own press-agent. It's woman's
+position--and delight. She values man on her own valuation--not his.
+Women are illogical--that's why they marry us."
+
+The major concluded his advice by giving Garrison a hearty thump on the
+back. Then he prepared to charge his wife's boudoir; to resume the peace
+conference with right on his side for the nonce.
+
+Garrison slowly made his way down-stairs. His face was set. He knew his
+love for Sue was hopeless; an absurdity, a crime. But why had she broken
+the engagement? Had Waterbury said anything? He would go over and face
+Waterbury; face him and be done with it. He was reckless, desperate.
+As he descended the wide veranda steps a man stepped from behind a
+magnolia-tree shadowing the broad walk. A clear three-quarter moon was
+riding in the heavens, and it picked out Garrison's thin set face.
+
+The man swung up, and tapped him on the shoulder. "Hello, Bud!"
+
+It was Dan Crimmins.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+"THEN I WAS NOT HONEST."
+
+Garrison eyed him coldly, and was about to pass when Crimmins barred his
+way.
+
+"I suppose when you gets up in the world, it ain't your way to know
+folks you knew before, is it?" he asked gently. "But Dan Crimmins has a
+heart, an' it ain't his way to shake friends, even if they has money. It
+ain't Crimmins' way."
+
+"Take your hand off my shoulder," said Garrison steadily.
+
+The other's black brows met, but he smiled genially.
+
+"It don't go, Bud. No, no." He shook his head. "Try that on those who
+don't know you. I know you. You're Billy Garrison; I'm Dan Crimmins.
+Now, if you want me to blow in an' tell the major who you are, just say
+so. I'm obligin'. It's Crimmins' way. But if you want to help an old
+friend who's down an' out, just say so. I'm waitin'."
+
+Garrison eyed him. Crimmins? Crimmins? The name was part of his dream.
+What had he been to this man? What did this man know?
+
+"Take a walk down the pike," suggested the other easily. "It ain't often
+you have the pleasure of seein' an old friend, an' the excitement is a
+little too much for you. I know how it is," he added sympathetically. He
+was closely watching Garrison's face.
+
+Garrison mechanically agreed, wondering.
+
+"It's this way," began Crimmins, once the shelter of the pike was
+gained. "I'm Billy Crimmins' brother--the chap who trains for Major
+Calvert. Now, I was down an' out--I guess you know why--an' so I wrote
+him askin' for a little help. An' he wouldn't give it. He's what you
+might call a lovin', confidin', tender young brother. But he mentioned
+in his letter that Bob Waterbury was here, and he asked why I had left
+his service. Some things don't get into the papers down here, an' it's
+just as well. You know why I left Waterbury. Waterbury----!"
+
+Here Crimmins carefully selected a variety of adjectives with which to
+decorate the turfman. He also spoke freely about the other's ancestors,
+and concluded with voicing certain dark convictions regarding Mr.
+Waterbury's future.
+
+Garrison listened blankly. "What's all this to me?" he asked sharply. "I
+don't know you nor Mr. Waterbury."
+
+"Hell you don't!" rapped out Crimmins. "Quit that game. I may have done
+things against you, but I've paid for them. You can't touch me on that
+count, but I can touch you, for I know you ain't the major's nephew--no
+more than the Sheik of Umpooba. I'm ashamed of you. Tryin' on a game
+like that with your old trainer, who knows you--"
+
+Garrison caught him fiercely by the arm. His old trainer! Then he was
+Billy Garrison. Memory was fighting furiously. He was on fire. "Billy
+Garrison, Billy Garrison, Billy Garrison," he repeated over and over,
+shaking Crimmins like a reed. "Go on, go on, go on," he panted. "Tell me
+what you know about me. Go on, go on. Am I Garrison? Am I? Am I?"
+
+Then, holding the other as in a vise, the thoughts that had been
+writhing in his mind for so long came hurtling forth. At last here was
+some one who knew him. His old trainer. What better friend could he
+need?
+
+He panted in his frenzy. The words came tripping over one another,
+smothering, choking. And Crimmins with set face listened; listened as
+Garrison went over past events; events since that memorable morning he
+had awakened in the hospital with the world a blank and the past a blur.
+He told all--all; like a little child babbling at his mother's knee.
+
+"Why did I leave the track? Why? Why?" he finished in a whirlwind of
+passion. "What happened? Tell me. Say I'm honest. Say it, Crimmins;
+say it. Help me to get back. I can ride--ride like glory. I'll win for
+you--anything. Anything to get me out of this hell of deceit, nonentity
+namelessness. Help me to square myself. I'll make a name nobody'll be
+ashamed of--" His words faded away. Passion left him weak and quivering.
+
+Crimmins judicially cleared his throat. There was a queer light in his
+eyes.
+
+"It ain't Dan Crimmins' way to go back on a friend," he began, laying a
+hand on Garrison's shoulder. "You don't remember nothing, all on account
+of that bingle you got on the head. But it was Crimmins that made you,
+Bud. Sweated over you like a father. It was Crimmins who got you out
+of many a tight place, when you wouldn't listen to his advice. I ain't
+saying it wasn't right to skip out after you'd thrown every race and the
+Carter; after poisoning Sis--"
+
+"Then--I--was--not--honest?" asked Garrison. He was horribly quiet.
+
+"Emphatic'ly no," said Crimmins sadly. He shook his head. "And you don't
+remember how you came to Dan Crimmins the night you skipped out and you
+says: 'Dan, Dan, my only friend, tried and true, I'm broke.' Just like
+that you says it. And Dan says, without waitin' for you to ask; he says:
+'Billy, you and me have been pals for fifteen years; pals man and boy. A
+friend is a friend, and a man who's broke don't want sympathy--he needs
+money. Here's three thousand dollars--all I've got. I was going to buy
+a home for the old mother, but friendship in need comes before all. It's
+yours. Take it. Don't say a word. Crimmins has a heart, and it's Dan
+Crimmins' way. He may suffer for it, but it's his way.' That's what he
+says."
+
+"Go on," whispered Garrison. His eyes were very wide and vacant.
+
+Crimmins spat carefully, as if to stimulate his imagination.
+
+"No, no, you don't remember," he mused sadly. "Now you're tooting along
+with the high rollers. But I ain't kickin'. It's Crimmins' way never to
+give his hand in the dark, but when he does give it--for life, my boy,
+for life. But I was thinkin' of the wife and kids you left up in Long
+Island; left to face the music. Of course I stood their friend as best I
+could--"
+
+"Then--I'm married?" asked Garrison slowly. He laughed--a laugh that
+caused the righteous Crimmins to wince. The latter carefully wiped his
+eyes with a handkerchief that had once been white.
+
+"Boy, boy!" he said, in great agony of mind. "To think you've gone and
+forgot the sacred bond of matrimony! I thought at least you would have
+remembered that. But I says to your wife, I says: 'Billy will come back.
+He ain't the kind to leave you an' the kids go to the poorhouse, all for
+the want of a little gumption. He'll come back and face the charges--"
+
+"What charges?" Garrison did not recognize his own voice.
+
+"Why, poisoning Sis. It's a jail offense," exclaimed Crimmins.
+
+"Indeed," commented Garrison.
+
+Again he laughed and again the righteous Crimmins winced. Garrison's
+gray eyes had the glint of sun shining on ice. His mouth looked as it
+had many a time when he fought neck-and-neck down the stretch, snatching
+victory by sheer, condensed, bulldog grit. Crimmins knew of old what
+that mouth portended, and he spoke hurriedly.
+
+"Don't do anything rash, Bud. Bygones is bygones, and, as the Bible
+says: 'Circumstances alters cases,' and--"
+
+"Then this is how I stand," cut in Garrison steadily, unheeding the
+advice. He counted the dishonorable tally on his fingers. "I'm a
+horse-poisoner, a thief, a welcher. I've deserted my wife and family. I
+owe you--how much?"
+
+"Five thousand," said Crimmins deprecatingly, adding on the two just to
+show he had no hard feelings.
+
+"Good," said Garrison. He bit his knuckles; bit until the blood came.
+"Good," he said again. He was silent.
+
+"I ain't in a hurry," put in Crimmins magnanimously. "But you can pay it
+easy. The major--"
+
+"Is a gentleman," finished Garrison, eyes narrowed. "A gentleman whom
+I've wronged--treated like--" He clenched his hands. Words were of no
+avail.
+
+"That's all right," argued the other persuasively. "What's the use of
+gettin' flossy over it now? Ain't you known all along, when you put
+the game up on him, that you wasn't his nephew; that you were doin' him
+dirt?"
+
+"Shut up," blazed Garrison savagely. "I know--what I've done. Fouled
+those I'm not fit to grovel to. I thought I was honest--in a way. Now I
+know I'm the scum I am--"
+
+"You don't mean to say you're goin' to welch again?" asked the horrified
+Crimmins. "Goin' to tell the major--"
+
+"Just that, Crimmins. Tell them what I am. Tell Waterbury, and face that
+charge for poisoning his horse. I may have been what you say, but
+I'm not that now. I'm not," he reiterated passionately, daring
+contradiction. "I've sneaked long enough. Now I'm done with it--"
+
+"See here," inserted Crimmins, dangerously reasonable, "your little
+white-washing game may be all right to you, but where does Dan Crimmins
+come in and sit down? It ain't his way to be left standing. You
+splittin' to the major and Waterbury? They'll mash your face off! And
+where's my five thousand, eh? Where is it if you throw over the bank?"
+
+"Damn your five thousand!" shrilled Garrison, passion throwing him.
+"What's your debt to what I owe? What's money? You say you're my friend.
+You say you have been. Yet you come here to blackmail me--yes, that's
+the word I used, and the one I mean. Blackmail. You want me to continue
+living a lie so that I may stop your mouth with money. You say I'm
+married. But do you wish me to go back to my wife and children, to try
+to square myself before God and them? Do you wish me to face Waterbury,
+and take what's coming to me? No, you don't, you don't. You lie if you
+say you do. It's yourself--yourself you're thinking of. I'm to be
+your jackal. That's your friendship, but I say if that's friendship,
+Crimmins, then to the devil with it, and may God send me hatred
+instead!" He choked with the sheer smother of his passion.
+
+Crimmins was breathing heavily. Then passion marked him for the thing
+he was. Garrison saw confronting him not the unctuous, plausible friend,
+but a hunted animal, with fear and venom showing in his narrowed eyes.
+And, curiously enough, he noticed for the first time that the prison
+pallor was strong on Crimmins' face, and that the hair above his
+outstanding ears was clipped to the roots.
+
+Then Crimmins spoke; through his teeth, and very slowly: "So you'll
+go to Waterbury, eh?" And he nodded the words home. "You--little cur,
+you--you little misbegotten bottle of bile! What are you and your
+hypocrisies to me? You don't know me, you don't know me." He laughed,
+and Garrison felt repulsion fingering his heart. Then the former trainer
+shot out a clawing, ravenous hand. "I want that money--want it quick!"
+he spat, taking a step forward. "You want hatred, eh? Well, hatred
+you'll have, boy. Hatred that I've always given you, you miserable,
+puling, lily-livered spawn of a--"
+
+Garrison blotted out the insult to his mother's memory with his
+knuckles. "And that's for your friendship," he said, smashing home a
+right cross.
+
+Crimmins arose very slowly from the white road, and even thought of
+flicking some of the fine dust from his coat. He was smiling. The moon
+was very bright. Crimmins glanced up and down the deserted pike. From
+the distant town a bell chimed the hour of eight. He had twenty pounds
+the better of the weights, but he was taking no chances. For Garrison,
+all his wealth of hard-earned fistic education roused, was waiting;
+waiting with the infinite patience of the wounded cougar.
+
+Crimmins looked up and down the road again. Then he came in, a
+black-jack clenched until the veins in his hand ridged out purple and
+taut as did those in his neck. A muscle was beating in his wooden cheek.
+He struck savagely. Garrison side-stepped, and his fist clacked under
+Crimmins' chin. Neither spoke. Again Crimmins came in.
+
+A great splatter of hoof-beats came from down the pike, sounding like
+the vomitings of a Gatling gun. A horse streaked its way toward them.
+Crimmins darted into the underbrush bordering the pike. The horse came
+fast. It flashed past Garrison. Its rider was swaying in the saddle;
+swaying with white, tense face and sawing hands. The eyes were fixed
+straight ahead, vacant. A broken saddle-girth flapped raggedly. Garrison
+recognized the fact that it was a runaway, with Sue Desha up.
+
+Another horse followed, throwing space furiously. It was a big bay
+gelding. As it drew abreast of Garrison, standing motionless in the
+white road, it shied. Its rider rocketed over its head, thudded on the
+ground, heaved once or twice, and then lay very still. The horse swept
+on. As it passed, Garrison swung beside it, caught its pace for an
+instant, and then eased himself into the saddle. Then he bent over and
+rode as only he could ride. It was a runaway handicap. Sue's life was
+the stake, and the odds were against him.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+SUE DECLARES HER LOVE.
+
+It was Waterbury who was lying unconscious on the lonely Logan Pike;
+Waterbury who had been thrown as the bay gelding strove desperately to
+overhaul the flying runaway filly.
+
+Sue had gone for an evening ride. She wished to be alone. It had been
+impossible to lose the ubiquitous Mr. Waterbury, but this evening The
+Rogue had evinced premonitory symptoms of a distemper, and the greatly
+exercised colonel had induced the turfman to ride over and have a look
+at him. This left Sue absolutely unfettered, the first occasion in a
+week.
+
+She was of the kind who fought out trouble silently, but not placidly.
+She must have something to contend against; something on which to
+work out the distemper of a heart and mind not in harmony. She must
+experience physical exhaustion before resignation came. In learning a
+lesson she could not remain inactive. She must walk, walk, up and down,
+up an down, until its moral or text was beaten into her mentality with
+her echoing footsteps.
+
+On this occasion she was in the humor to dare the impossible; dare
+through sheer irritability of heart--not mind. And so she saddled
+Lethe--an unregenerate pinto of the Southern Trail, whose concealed
+devilishness forcibly reminded one of Balzac's famous description: "A
+clenched fist hidden in an empty sleeve."
+
+She had been forbidden to ride the pinto ever since the day it was
+brought home to her with irrefutable emphasis that the shortest distance
+between two points is a straight line. It was more of a parabola she
+described, when, bucked off, her head smashed the ground, but the simile
+serves.
+
+But she would ride Lethe to-night. The other horses were too
+comfortable. They served to irritate the bandit passions, not to subdue
+them. She panted for some one, something, to break to her will.
+
+Lethe felt that there was a passion that night riding her; a passion
+that far surpassed her own. Womanlike, she decided to arbitrate. She
+would wait until this all-powerful passion burned itself out; then she
+could afford to safely agitate her own. It would not have grown less
+in the necessary interim. So, much to Sue's surprise, the filly was as
+gentle as the proverbial lamb.
+
+As she turned for home, Waterbury rode out of the deepening shadows
+behind her. He had left the colonel at his breeding-farm. Waterbury
+and Sue rode in silence. The girl was giving all her attention to her
+thoughts. What was left over was devoted to the insistent mouth
+of Lethe, who ever and anon tested the grip on her bridle-rein;
+ascertaining whether or not there were any symptoms of relaxation or
+abstraction.
+
+It is human nature to grow tired of being good. Waterbury's better
+nature had been in the ascendancy for over a week. He thought he could
+afford to draw on this surplus balance to his credit. He was riding very
+close to Sue. He had encroached, inch by inch, but her oblivion had not
+been inclination, as Waterbury fancied. He edged nearer. As she did not
+heed the steal, he took it for a grant. We fit facts to our inclination.
+The animal arose mightily in him. In stooping to avoid an overhanging
+branch he brushed against her. The contact set him aflame. He was
+hungrily eyeing her profile. Then in a second, he had crushed her head
+to his shoulder, and was fiercely kissing her again and again--lips,
+hair, eyes; eyes, hair, lips.
+
+"There!" he panted, releasing her. He laughed foolishly, biting his
+nails. His mouth felt as if roofed with sand-paper. His face was white,
+but not as white as hers.
+
+She was silent. Then she drew a handkerchief from her sleeve and very
+carefully wiped her lips. She was absolutely silent, but a pulse was
+beating--beating in her slim throat. The action, her silence, inflamed
+Waterbury. He made to crush her waist with his ravenous arm. Then, for
+the first time, she turned slowly, and her narrowed eyes met his.
+He saw, even in the gloom. Again he laughed, but the onrushing blood
+purpled his neck.
+
+Desperation came to help him brave those eyes--came and failed. He
+talked, declaimed, avowed--grew brutally frank. Finally he spoke of the
+mortgage he held, and waited, breathing heavily, for the answer. There
+was none.
+
+"I suppose it's some one else, eh?" he rapped out, red showing in the
+brown of his eyes.
+
+Silence. He savagely cut the gelding across the ears, and then checked
+its answering, maddened leap. The red deepened in Sue's cheek--two red
+spots, the flag of courage.
+
+"It's this nephew of Major Calvert's," added Waterbury. He lost the
+last shred of common decency he could lay claim to; it was caught up and
+whirled away in the tempest of his passion. "I saw him to-day, on my
+way to the track. He didn't see me. When I knew him his name was
+Garrison--Billy Garrison. I discharged him for dishonesty. I suppose he
+sneaked home to a confiding uncle when the world had kicked him out. I
+suppose they think he's all right, same as you do. But he's a thief. A
+common, low-down--"
+
+The girl turned swiftly, and her little gauntlet caught Waterbury full
+across the mouth.
+
+"You lie!" she whispered, very softly, her face white and quivering, her
+eyes black with passion.
+
+And then Lethe saw her opportunity. Sensed it in the momentary relaxing
+of the bridle-rein. She whipped the bit into her fierce, even, white
+teeth, and with a snort shot down the pike.
+
+And then Waterbury's better self gained supremacy; contrition,
+self-hatred rushing in like a fierce tidal wave and swamping the last
+vestige of animalism. He spurred blindly after the fast-disappearing
+filly.
+
+*****
+
+Garrison rode one of the best races of his life that night. It was a
+trial of stamina and nerve. Lethe was primarily a sprinter, and the
+gelding, raised to his greatest effort by the genius of his rider,
+outfought her, outstayed her. As he flew down the moon-swept road,
+bright as at any noontime, Garrison knew success would be his, providing
+Sue kept her seat, her nerve, and the saddle from twisting.
+
+Inch by inch the white, shadow-flecked space between the gelding and the
+filly was eaten up. On, on, with only the tempest of their speed and the
+flying hoofs for audience. On, on, until now the gelding had poked his
+nose past the filly's flying hocks.
+
+Garrison knew horses. He called on the gelding for a supreme effort,
+and the gelding answered impressively. He hunched himself, shot past the
+filly. Twenty yards' gain, twenty yards to the fore, and then Garrison
+turned easily in the saddle. "All right, Miss Desha, let her come," he
+sang out cheerfully.
+
+And the filly came, came hard; came with all the bitterness of being
+outstripped by a clumsy gelding whom she had beaten time and again. As
+she caught the latter's slowed pace, as her wicked nose drew alongside
+of the other's withers, Garrison shot out a hand, clamped an iron clutch
+on the spume-smeared bit, swung the gelding across the filly's right
+of way; then, with his right hand, choked the fight from her widespread
+nostrils.
+
+And then, womanlike, Sue fainted, and Garrison was just in time to ease
+her through his arms to the ground. The two horses, thoroughly blown,
+placidly settled down to nibble the grass by the wayside.
+
+Sue lay there, her wealth of hair clouding Garrison's shoulder. He
+watched consciousness return, the flutter of her breath. The perfume
+of her skin was in his nostrils, his mouth; stealing away his honor. He
+held her close. She shivered.
+
+He fought to keep from kissing her as she lay there unarmed. Then her
+throat pulsed; her eyes opened. Garrison kissed her again and again;
+gripping her as a drowning man grips at a passing straw.
+
+With a great heave and a passionate cry she flung him from her. She rose
+unsteadily to her feet. He stood, shame engulfing him. Then she caught
+her breath hard.
+
+"Oh!" she said softly, "it's--it's you!" She laughed tremulously. "I--I
+thought it was Mr. Waterbury."
+
+Relief, longing was in the voice. She made a pleading motion with her
+arms--a child longing for its mother's neck. He did not see, heed. He
+was nervously running his hand through his hair, face flaming. Silence.
+
+"Mr. Waterbury was thrown. I took his mount," he blurted out, at length.
+"Are you hurt?"
+
+She shook her head without replying; biting her lips. She was devouring
+him with her eyes; eyes dark with passion. The memory of that moment
+in his arms was seething within her. Why--why had she not known! They
+looked at each other; eye to eye; soul to soul. Neither spoke.
+
+She shivered, though the night was warm.
+
+"Why did you call me Miss Desha?" she asked, at length.
+
+"Because," he said feebly--his nature was true to his Southern name. He
+was fighting self like the girl--"I'm going away," he added. It had to
+come with a rush or not at all. And it must come. He heaved his chest
+as a swimmer seeks to breast the waves. "I'm not worthy of you. I'm a--a
+beast," he said. "I lied to you; lied when I said I was not Garrison. I
+am Billy Garrison. I did not know that I was. I know now. Know----"
+
+"I knew you were," said the girl simply. "Why did you try to hide it?
+Shame?"
+
+"No." In sharp staccato sentences he told her of his lapse of memory.
+"It was not because I was a thief; because I was kicked from the turf;
+because I was a horse-poisoner--"
+
+"Then--it's true?" she asked.
+
+"That I'm a--beast?" he asked grimly. "Yes, it's true. You doubt me,
+don't you? You think I knew my identity, my crimes all along, and that I
+was afraid. Say you doubt me."
+
+"I believe you," she said quietly.
+
+"Thank you," he replied as quietly.
+
+"And--you think it necessary, imperative that you go away?" There was an
+unuttered sob in her voice, though she sought to choke it back.
+
+"I do." He laughed a little--the laugh that had caused the righteous Dan
+Crimmins to wince.
+
+She made a passionate gesture with her hand. "Billy," she said, and
+stopped, eyes flaming.
+
+"You were right to break the engagement," he said slowly, eyes on
+the ground. "I suppose Mr. Waterbury told you who I was, and--and, of
+course, you could only act as you did."
+
+She was silent, her face quivering.
+
+"And you think that of me? You would think it of me? No, from the first
+I knew you were Garrison--"
+
+"Forgive me," he inserted.
+
+"I broke the engagement," she added, "because conditions were
+changed--with me. My condition was no longer what it was when the
+engagement was made--" She checked herself with an effort.
+
+"I think I understand--now," he said, and admiration was in his eyes;
+"I know the track. I should." He was speaking lifelessly, eyes on the
+ground. "And I understand that you do not know--all."
+
+"All?"
+
+"Um-m-m." He looked up and faced her eyes, head held high. "I am an
+adventurer," he said slowly. "A scoundrel, an impostor. I am not--Major
+Calvert's nephew." And he watched her eyes; watched unflinchingly as
+they changed and changed again. But he would not look away.
+
+"I--I think I will sit down, if you don't mind," she whispered, hand at
+throat. She seated herself, as one in a maze, on a log by the wayside.
+She looked up, a twisted little smile on her lips, as he stood above
+her. "Won't--won't you sit down and tell--tell me all?"
+
+He obeyed automatically, not striving to fathom the great charity of her
+silence. And then he told all--all. Even as he had told that very good
+trainer and righteous friend, Dan Crimmins. His voice was perfectly
+lifeless. And the girl listened, lips clenched on teeth.
+
+"And--and that's all," he whispered. "God knows it's enough--too much."
+He drew himself away as some unclean thing.
+
+"All that, all that, and you only a boy," whispered the girl, half
+to herself. "You must not tell the major. You must not," she cried
+fiercely.
+
+"I must," he whispered. "I will."
+
+"You must not. You won't. You must go away, go away. Wipe the slate
+clean," she added tensely. "You must not tell the major. It must be
+broken to him gently, by degrees. Boy, boy, don't you know what it is
+to love; to have your heart twisted, broken, trampled? You must not tell
+him. It would kill. I--know." She crushed her hands in her lap.
+
+"I'm a coward if I run," he said.
+
+"A murderer if you stay," she answered. "And Mr. Waterbury--he will flay
+you--keep you in the mire. I know. No, you must go, you must go. Must
+have a chance for regeneration."
+
+"You are very kind--very kind. You do not say you loathe me." He arose
+abruptly, clenching his hands above his head in silent agony.
+
+"No, I do not," she whispered, leaning forward, hands gripping the log,
+eyes burning up into his face. "I do not. Because I can't. I can't.
+Because I love you, love you, love you. Boy, boy, can't you see? Won't
+you see? I love you--"
+
+"Don't," he cried sharply, as if in physical agony. "You don't know what
+you say--"
+
+"I do, I do. I love you, love you," she stormed. Passion, long stamped
+down, had arisen in all its might. The surging intensity of her nature
+was at white heat. It had broken all bonds, swept everything aside in
+its mad rush. "Take me with you. Take me with you--anywhere," she panted
+passionately. She arose and caught him swiftly by the arm, forcing up
+her flaming face to his. "I don't care what you are--I know what you
+will be. I've loved you from the first. I lied when I ever said I hated
+you. I'll help you to make a new start. Oh, so hard! Try me. Try me.
+Take me with you. You are all I have. I can't give you up. I won't! Take
+me, take me. Do, do, do!" Her head thrown back, she forced a hungry arm
+about his neck and strove to drag his lips to hers.
+
+He caught both wrists and eyed her. She was panting, but her eyes
+met his unwaveringly, gloriously unashamed. He fought for every word.
+"Don't--tempt--me--Sue. Good God, girl! you don't know how I love you.
+You can't. Loved you from that night in the train. Now I know who you
+were, what you are to me--everything. Help me to think of you, not of
+myself. You must guard yourself. I'm tired of fighting--I can't----"
+
+"It's the girl up North?"
+
+He drew back. He had forgotten. He turned away, head bowed. Both were
+fighting--fighting against love--everything. Then Sue drew a great
+breath and commenced to shiver.
+
+"I was wrong. You must go to her," she whispered. "She has the right of
+way. She has the right of way. Go, go," she blazed, passion slipping up
+again. "Go before I forget honor; forget everything but that I love."
+
+Garrison turned. She never forgot the look his face held; never forgot
+the tone of his voice.
+
+"I go. Good-by, Sue. I go to the girl up North. You are above me in
+every way--infinitely above me. Yes, the girl up North. I had forgotten.
+She is my wife. And I have children."
+
+He swung on his heel and blindly flung himself upon the waiting gelding.
+
+Sue stood motionless.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+GARRISON HIMSELF AGAIN.
+
+That night Garrison left for New York; left with the memory of Sue
+standing there on the moonlit pike, that look in her eyes; that look of
+dazed horror which he strove blindly to shut out. He did not return
+to Calvert House; not because he remembered the girl's advice and was
+acting upon it. His mind had no room for the past. Every blood-vessel
+was striving to grapple with the present. He was numb with agony. It
+seemed as if his brain had been beaten with sticks; beaten to a pulp.
+That last scene with Sue had uprooted every fiber of his being. He
+writhed when he thought of it. But one thought possessed him. To get
+away, get away, get away; out of it all; anyhow, anywhere.
+
+He was like a raw recruit who has been lying on the firing-line,
+suffering the agonies of apprehension, of imagination; experiencing the
+proximity of death in cold blood, without the heat of action to render
+him oblivious.
+
+Garrison had been on the firing-line for so long that his nerve was
+frayed to ribbons. Now the blow had fallen at last. The exposure had
+come, and a fierce frenzy possessed him to complete the work begun.
+He craved physical combat. And when he thought of Sue he felt like a
+murderer fleeing from the scene of his crime; striving, with distance,
+to blot out the memory of his victim. That was all he thought of. That,
+and to get away--to flee from himself. Afterward, analysis of actions
+would come. At present, only action; only action.
+
+It was five miles to the Cottonton depot, reached by a road that
+branched off from the Logan Pike about half a mile above the spot where
+Waterbury had been thrown. He remembered that there was a through train
+at ten-fifteen. He would have time if he rode hard. With head bowed,
+shoulders hunched, he bent over the gelding. He had no recollection of
+that ride.
+
+But the long, weary journey North was one he had full recollection of.
+He was forced to remain partially inactive, though he paced from smoking
+to observation-car time and time again. He could not remain still. The
+first great fury of the storm had passed. It had swept him up, weak and
+nerveless, on the beach of retrospect; among the wreck of past hopes;
+the flotsam and jetsam of what might have been.
+
+He had time for self-analysis, for remorse, for the fierce probings
+of conscience. One minute he regretted that he had run away without
+confessing to the major; the next, remembering Sue's advice, he
+was glad. He tried to shut out the girl's picture from his heart.
+Impossible. She was the picture; all else was but frame. He knew that
+he had lost her irrevocably. What must she think of him? How she must
+utterly despise him!
+
+On the second day doubt came to Garrison, and with it a ray of hope. For
+the first time the possibility suggested itself that Dan Crimmins,
+from the deep well of his lively imagination, might have concocted Mrs.
+Garrison and offspring. Crimmins had said he had always hated him. And
+he had acted like a villain. He looked like one; like a felon, but newly
+jail-freed. Might he not have invented the statement through sheer ill
+will? Realizing that Garrison's memory was a blank, might he not have
+sought to rivet the blackmailing fetters upon him by this new bolt?
+
+Thus Garrison reasoned, and outlined two schemes. First, he would find
+his wife if wife there were. He could not love her, for love must have
+a beginning, and it feeds on the past. He had neither. But he would be
+loyal to her; loyal as Crimmins said she had been loyal to him. Then he
+would face whatever charges were against him, and seek restoration from
+the jockey club, though it took his lifetime. And he would seek some way
+of wiping out, or at least diminishing, the stain he had left behind him
+in Virginia.
+
+On the other hand, if Crimmins had lied--Garrison's jaw came out and his
+eyes snapped. Then he would scrape himself morally clean, and fight and
+fight for honorable recognition from the world. He would prove that
+a "has-been" can come back. He would brand the negative as a lie. And
+then--Sue. Perhaps--perhaps.
+
+Those were the two roads. Which would he traverse? Whichever it was,
+though his heart, his entire being, lay with the latter, he would follow
+the pointing finger of honor; follow it to the end, no matter what
+it might cost, or where it might lead. Love had restored to him the
+appreciation of man's birthright; the birthright without which nothing
+is won in this world or the next. He had gained self-respect. At present
+it was but the thought. He would fight to make it reality; fight to keep
+it.
+
+And that night as the train was leaping out of the darkness toward
+the lights of the great city, racing toward its haven, rushing like a
+falling comet, some one blundered. The world called it a disaster; the
+official statement, an accident, an open switch; the press called it
+an outrage. Pessimism called it fate--stern mother of the unsavory.
+Optimism called it Providence. At all events, the train jammed shut
+like a closing telescope. Undiluted Hades was very prevalent for over an
+hour. There were groans, screams, prayers--all the jargon of those about
+to precipitately return from whence they came. It was not a pleasant
+scene. Ghouls were there. But mercy, charity, and great courage were
+also there. And Garrison was there.
+
+Fate, the unsavory, had been with him. He had been thrown clear at the
+first crash; thrown through his sleeping-berth window. Physically he was
+not very presentable. But he fought a good fight against the flames and
+the general chaos.
+
+One of the forward cars was a caldron of flame. A baby's cry swung out
+from among the roar and smart of the living hell. There was a frantic
+father and a demented mother. Both had to be thrown and pounded into
+submission; held by sheer weight and muscle.
+
+There were brave men there that night, but there was no sense in giving
+two lives for one. Death was reaping more than enough. They would try to
+save the "kid," but it looked hopeless. Was it a girl? Yes, and an only
+child? She must be pinned under a seat. The fire would be about opening
+up on her. Sure--sure they would see what could be done. Anyway, the
+roof was due to smash down. But they'd see. But there were lots of
+others who needed a hand; others who were not pinned under seats with
+the flames hungry for them.
+
+But Garrison had swung on to a near-by horse-cart, jammed into rubber
+boots, coats, and helmet, tying a wet towel over nose and mouth. And as
+some stared, some cursed, and some cheered feebly, he smashed his way
+through the smother of flame to the choking screams of the child.
+
+The roof fell in. A great crash and a spouting fire of flame. An
+eternity, and then he emerged like one of the three prophets from the
+fiery furnace. Only he was not a Shadrach, Meshach, or Abednego. He
+was not fashioned from providential asbestos. He was vulnerable. They
+carried him to a near-by house. His head had been wonderfully smashed by
+the falling roof. His eyebrows and hair were left behind in the smother
+of flame. He was fire-licked from toe to heel. He was raving. But the
+child was safe. And that wreck and that rescue went down in history.
+
+For weeks Garrison was in the hospital. It was very like the rehearsal
+of a past performance. He was completely out of his head. It was all
+very like the months he put in at Bellevue in the long ago, before he
+had experienced the hunger-cancer and compromised with honesty.
+
+And again there came nights when doctors shook their heads and nurses
+looked grave; nights when it was understood that before another dawn
+had come creeping through the windows little Billy Garrison would have
+crossed the Big Divide; nights when the shibboleths of a dead-and-gone
+life were even fluttering on his lips; nights when names but not
+identities fought with one another for existence; fought for birth, for
+supremacy, and "Sue" always won; nights when he sat up in bed as he
+had sat up in Bellevue long ago, and with tense hands and blazing eyes
+fought out victory on the stretch. Horrible, horrible nights; surcharged
+with the frenzy and unreality of a nightmare.
+
+And one of his audience who seldom left the narrow cot was a man who had
+come to look for a friend among the wreck victims; come and found him
+not. He had chanced to pass Garrison's cot. And he had remained.
+
+Came a night at last when stamina and hope and grit won the long,
+long fight. The crisis was turned. The demons, defeated, who had
+been fighting among themselves for the possession of Garrison's
+mind, reluctantly gave it back to him. And, moreover, they gave it
+back--intact. The part they had stolen that night in the Hoffman House
+was replaced.
+
+This restoration the doctors subsequently called by a very learned and
+mysterious name. They gave an esoteric explanation redounding greatly to
+the credit of the general medical and surgical world. It was something
+to the effect that the initial blow Garrison had received had forced a
+piece of bone against the brain in such a manner as to defy mere man's
+surgery. This had caused the lapse of memory.
+
+Then had come the second blow that night of the wreck. Where man had
+failed, nature had stepped in and operated successfully. Her methods
+had been crude, but effective. The unscientific blow on the head had
+restored the dislodged bone to its proper place. The medical world was
+highly pleased over this manifestation of nature's surgical skill, and
+appeared to think that she had operated under its direction. And nature
+never denied it.
+
+As Garrison opened his eyes, dazed, weak as water, memory, full,
+complete, rushed into action. His brain recalled everything--everything
+from the period it is given man to remember down to the present. It
+was all so clear, so perfect, so workmanlike. The long-halted clock of
+memory was ticking away merrily, perfectly, and not one hour was missing
+from its dial. The thread of his severed life was joined--joined in such
+a manner that no hitch or knot was apparent.
+
+To use a third simile, the former blank, utterly fearsome space, was
+filled--filled with clear writing, without blotch or blemish. And on
+the space was not recorded one deed he had dreaded to see. There were
+mistakes, weaknesses--but not dishonor. For a moment he could not grasp
+the full meaning of the blessing. He could only sense that he had indeed
+been blessed above his deserts.
+
+And then as Garrison understood what it all meant to him; understood the
+chief fact that he had not deserted wife and children; that Sue might
+be won, he crushed his face to the pillow and cried--cried like a little
+child.
+
+And a big man, sitting in the shelter of a screen, hitched his chair
+nearer the cot, and laid both hands on Garrison's. He did not speak, but
+there was a wonderful light in his eyes--steady, clear gray eyes.
+
+"Kid," he said. "Kid."
+
+Garrison turned swiftly. His hand gripped the other's.
+
+"Jimmie Drake," he whispered. For the first time the blood came to his
+face.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+PROVEN CLEAN.
+
+Two months had gone in; two months of slow recuperation, regeneration
+for Garrison. He was just beginning to look at life from the standpoint
+of unremitting toil and endeavor. It is the only satisfactory
+standpoint. From it we see life in its true proportions. Neither
+distorted through the blue glasses of pessimism--but another name for
+the failure of misapplication--nor through the wonderful rose-colored
+glasses of the dreamer. He was patiently going back over his past life;
+returning to the point where he had deserted the clearly defined path of
+honor and duty for the flowery fields of unbridled license.
+
+It was no easy task he had set himself, but he did not falter by the
+wayside. Three great stimulants he had--health, the thought of Sue
+Desha, and the practical assistance of Jimmie Drake.
+
+It was a month, dating from the memorable meeting with the turfman,
+before Garrison was able to leave the hospital. When he did, it was to
+take up his life at Drake's Long Island breeding-farm and racing-stable;
+for in the interim Drake had passed from book-making stage to that of
+owner. He ran a first-class string of mounts, and he signed Garrison to
+ride for him during the ensuing season.
+
+It was the first chance for regeneration, and it had been timidly asked
+and gladly granted; asked and granted during one of the long nights in
+the hospital when Garrison was struggling for strength and faith. It had
+been the first time he had been permitted to talk for any great length.
+
+"Thank you," he said, on the granting of his request, which he more than
+thought would be refused. His eyes voiced where his lips were dumb. "I
+haven't gone back, Jimmie, but it's good of you to give me a chance
+on my say-so. I'll bear it in mind. And--and it's good of you, Jimmie,
+to--to come and sit with me. I--I appreciate it all, and I don't see why
+you should do it."
+
+Drake laughed awkwardly.
+
+"It's the least I could do, kid. The favor ain't on my side, it's on
+yours. Anyway, what use is a friend if he ain't there when you need him?
+It was luck I found you here. I thought you had disappeared for keeps.
+Remember that day you cut me on Broadway? I ought to have followed you,
+but I was sore--"
+
+"But I--I didn't mean to cut you, Jimmie. I didn't know you. I want to
+tell you all about that--about everything. I'm just beginning to know
+now that I'm living. I've been buried alive. Honest!"
+
+"I always thought there was something back of your absent treatment.
+What was it?" Drake hitched his chair nearer and focused all his powers
+of concentration. "What was it, kid? Out with it. And if I can be of any
+help you know you have only to put it there." He held out a large hand.
+
+And then slowly, haltingly, but lucidly, dispassionately, events
+following in sequence, Garrison told everything; concealing nothing.
+Nor did he try to gloss over or strive to nullify his own dishonorable
+actions. He told everything, and the turfman, chin in hand, eyes riveted
+on the narrator, listened absorbed.
+
+"Gee!" Jimmie Drake whispered at last, "it sounds like a fairy-story. It
+don't sound real." Then he suddenly crashed a fist into his open palm.
+"I see, I see," he snapped, striving to control his excitement. "Then
+you don't know. You can't know."
+
+"Know what?" Garrison sat bolt upright in his narrow cot, his heart
+pounding.
+
+"Why--why about Crimmins, about Waterbury, about Sis--everything,"
+exclaimed Drake. "It was all in the Eastern papers. You were in Bellevue
+then. I thought you knew. Don't you know, kid, that it was proven that
+Crimmins poisoned Sis? Hold on, keep quiet. Yes, it was Crimmins. Now,
+don't get excited. Yes, I'll tell you all. Give me time. Why, kid, you
+were as clean as the wind that dried your first shirt. Sure, sure. We
+all knew it--then. And we thought you did--"
+
+"Tell me, tell me." Garrison's lip was quivering; his face gray with
+excitement.
+
+Drake ran on forcefully, succinctly, his hand gripping Garrison's.
+
+"Well, we'll take it up from that day of the Carter Handicap. Remember?
+When you and Waterbury had it out? Now, I had suspected that Dan
+Crimmins had been plunging against his stable for some time. I had
+got on to some bets he had put through with the aid of his dirty
+commissioners. That's why I stood up for you against Waterbury. I knew
+he was square. I knew he didn't throw the race, and, as for you--well,
+I said to myself: 'That ain't like the kid.' I knew the evidence against
+you, but it was hard to believe, kid. And I believed you when you said
+you hadn't made a cent on the race, but instead had lost all you had,
+I believed that. But I knew Crimmins had made a pile. I found that out.
+And I believed he drugged you, kid.
+
+"Now, when you tell me you were fighting consumption it clears a lot of
+space for me that has been dark. I knew you were doped half the time,
+but I thought you were going the pace with the pipe, though I'll admit
+I couldn't fathom what drug you were taking. But now I know Crimmins fed
+you dope while pretending to hand you nerve food. I know it. I know
+he bet against his stable time and ag'in and won every race you were
+accused of throwing. I tracked things pretty clear that day after I left
+you.
+
+"Well, I went to Waterbury and laid the charge against the trainer;
+giving him a chance to square himself before I made trouble higher up.
+Well, Waterbury was mad. Said he had no hand in it, and I believed him.
+The upshot of it was that he faced Crimmins. Now, Crimmins had been
+blowing himself on the pile he had made, and he was nasty. Instead of
+denying it and putting the proving of the game up to me, he took the bit
+in his mouth at something Waterbury said.
+
+"I don't know all the facts. They came out in the paper afterward. But
+Crimmins and Waterbury had a scrap, and the trainer was fired. He was
+fired when you went to the stable to say good-by to Sis. He was packing
+what things he had there, but when he saw you weren't on, he kept it
+mum. I believe then he was planning to do away with Sis, and you offered
+a nice easy get-away for him. He hated you. First, because you turned
+down the crooked deal he offered you, for it was he who was beating the
+bookies, and he wanted a pal. Secondly, he thought you had split about
+the dope, and he laid his discharge to you. And he hated Waterbury. He
+could square you both at one shot. He poisoned Sis when you'd gone.
+
+"Every one believed you guilty, for they didn't know the row Crimmins
+and Waterbury had. But Waterbury suspected. He and Crimmins had it out.
+He caught him on Broadway, a day or two later, and Crimmins walloped him
+over the head with a blackjack. Waterbury went to the hospital, and came
+next to dying. Crimmins went to jail. I guess he was down and out, all
+right, when, as you say, he heard from his brother that Waterbury was
+at Cottonton. I believe he went there to square him, but ran across you
+instead, and thought he could have a good blackmailing game on the side.
+That wife game was a plot to catch you, kid. He didn't think you'd dare
+to come North. When you told him about your lapse of memory, then he
+knew he was safe. You knew nothing of his showdown."
+
+Garrison covered his face with his hands. Only he knew the great, the
+mighty obsession that was slowly withdrawing itself from his heart. It
+was all so wonderful; all so incredible. Long contact with misfortune
+had sapped the natural resiliency of his character. It had been
+subjected to so much pressure that it had become flaccid. The pressure
+removed, it would be some time before the heart could act upon the
+message of good tidings the brain had conveyed to it. For a long time
+he remained silent. And Drake respected his silence to the letter. Then
+Garrison uncovered his eyes.
+
+"I can't believe it. I can't believe it," he whispered, wide-eyed. "It
+is too good to be true. It means too much. You're sure you're right,
+Jimmie? It means I'm proven clean, proven square. It means reinstatement
+on the turf. Means--everything."
+
+"All that, kid," said Drake. "I thought you knew."
+
+Garrison hugged his knees in a paroxysm of silent joy.
+
+"But--Waterbury?" he puzzled at length. "He knew I had been exonerated.
+And yet--yet he must have said something to the contrary to Miss Desha.
+She knew all along that I was Garrison; knew when I didn't know myself.
+But she thought me square. But Waterbury must have said something. I can
+never forget her saying when I confessed: 'It's true, then.' I can never
+forget that, and the look in her eyes."
+
+"Aye, Waterbury," mused Drake soberly. He eyed Garrison. "You know
+he's dead," he said simply. He nodded confirmation as the other stared,
+white-faced. "Died this morning after he was thrown. Fractured skull. I
+had word. Some right-meaning chap says somewhere something about saying
+nothing but good of the dead, kid. If Waterbury tried to queer you, it
+was through jealousy. I understand he cared something for Miss Desha.
+He had his good points, like every man. Think of them, kid, not the bad
+ones. I guess the bookkeeper up above will credit us with all the times
+we've tried to do the square, even if we petered out before we'd made
+good. Trying counts something, kid. Don't forget that."
+
+"Yes, he had his good points," whispered Garrison. "I don't forget,
+Jimmie. I don't forget that he has a cleaner bill of moral health than I
+have. I was an impostor. That I can't forget; cannot wipe out."
+
+"I was coming to that," Drake scratched his grizzled head elaborately.
+"I didn't say anything when you were unwinding that yarn, kid, but it
+sounded mighty tangled to me."
+
+"How?"
+
+"How? Why, we ain't living in fairy-books to-day. It's straight hard
+life. And there ain't any fools, as far as I can see, who are allowed to
+take up air and space. I've heard of Major Calvert, and his brains were
+all there the last time I heard of him--"
+
+"What do you mean?" Garrison bored his eyes into Drake's.
+
+"Why, I mean, kid, that blood is thicker than water, and leave it to
+a woman to see through a stone wall. I don't believe you could palm
+yourself off to the major and his wife as their nephew. It's not
+reasonable nohow. I don't believe any one could fool any family."
+
+"But I did!" Garrison was staring blankly. "I did, Jimmie! Remember I
+had the cooked-up proofs. Remember that they had never seen the real
+nephew--"
+
+"Oh, shucks! What's the odds? Blood's blood. You don't mean to say a
+man wouldn't know his own sister's child? Living in the house with him?
+Wouldn't there be some likeness, some family trait, some characteristic?
+Are folks any different from horses? No, no, it might happen in stories,
+but not life, not life."
+
+Garrison shook his head wearily. "I can't follow you, Jimmie. You like
+to argue for the sake of arguing. I don't understand. They did believe
+me. Isn't that enough? Why--why----" His face blanched at the thought.
+"You don't mean to say that they knew I was an imposter? Knew all along?
+You--can't mean that, Jimmie?"
+
+"I may," said Drake shortly. "But, see here, kid, you'll admit it
+would be impossible for two people to have that birthmark on them; the
+identical mark in the identical spot. You'll admit that. Now, wouldn't
+it be impossible?"
+
+"Improbable, but not impossible." Suddenly Garrison had commenced to
+breathe heavily, his hands clenching.
+
+Drake cocked his head on one side and closed an eye. He eyed Garrison
+steadily. "Kid, it seems to me that you've only been fooling yourself. I
+believe you're Major Calvert's nephew. That's straight."
+
+For a long time Garrison stared at him unwinkingly. Then he laughed
+wildly.
+
+"Oh, you're good, Jimmie. No, no. Don't tempt me. You forget; forget two
+great things. I know my mother's name was Loring, not Calvert. And my
+father's name was Garrison, not Dagget."
+
+"Um-m-m," mused Drake, knitting brows. "You don't say? But, see here,
+kid, didn't you say that this Dagget's mother was only Major Calvert's
+half-sister? How about that, eh? Then her name would be different from
+his. How about that? How do you know Loring mightn't fit it? Answer me
+that."
+
+"I never thought of that," whispered Garrison. "If you only are right,
+Jimmie! If you only are, what it would mean? But my father, my father,"
+he cried weakly. "My father. There's no getting around that, Jimmie.
+His name was Garrison. My name is Garrison. There's no dodging that. You
+can't change that into Dagget."
+
+"How do you know?" argued Drake, slowly, pertinaciously. "This here is
+my idea, and I ain't willing to give it up without a fight. How do
+you know but your father might have changed his name? I've known less
+likelier things to happen. You know he was good blood gone wrong. How do
+you know he mightn't have changed it so as not disgrace his family, eh?
+Changed it after he married your mother, and she stood for it so as not
+to disgrace her family. You were a kid when she died, and you weren't
+present, you say. How do you know but she mightn't have wanted to tell
+you a whole lot, eh? A whole lot your father wouldn't tell you because
+he never cared for you. No, the more I think of it the more I'm certain
+that you're Major Calvert's nephew. You're the only logical answer. That
+mark of the spur and the other incidents is good enough for me."
+
+"Don't tempt me, Jimmie, don't tempt me," pleaded Garrison again. "You
+don't know what it all means. I may be his nephew. I may be--God grant I
+am! But I must be honest. I must be honest."
+
+"Well, I'm going to hunt up that lawyer, Snark," affirmed Drake finally.
+"I won't rest until I see this thing through. Snark may have known all
+along you were the rightful heir, and merely put up a job to get a pile
+out of you when you came into the estate. Or he may have been honest in
+his dishonesty; may not have known. But I'm going to rustle round after
+him. Maybe there's proofs he holds. What about Major Calvert? Are you
+going to write him?"
+
+Garrison considered. "No--no," he said at length. "No, if--if by any
+chance I am his nephew--you see how I want to believe you, Jimmie, God
+knows how much--then I'll tell him afterward. Afterward when--I'm clean.
+I want to lie low; to square myself in my own sight and man's. I want to
+make another name for myself, Jimmie. I want to start all over and shame
+no man. If by any chance I am William C. Dagget, then--then I want to
+be worthy of that name. And I owe everything to Garrison. I'm going
+to clean that name. It meant something once--and it'll mean something
+again."
+
+"I believe you, kid."
+
+Subsequently, Drake fulfilled his word concerning the "rustling round"
+after that eminent lawyer, Theobald D. Snark. His efforts met with
+failure. Probably the eminent lawyer's business had increased so
+enormously that he had been compelled to vacate the niche he held in the
+Nassau Street bookcase. But Drake had not given up the fight.
+
+Meanwhile Garrison had commenced his life of regeneration at the
+turfman's Long Island stable. He was to ride Speedaway in the coming
+Carter Handicap. The event that had seen him go down, down to oblivion
+one year ago might herald the reascendency of his star. He had vowed it
+would. And so in grim silence he prepared for his farewell appearance in
+that great seriocomic tragedy of life called "Making Good."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+GARRISON FINDS HIMSELF.
+
+Sue never rightly remembered how the two months passed; the two months
+succeeding that hideous night when in paralyzed silence she watched
+Garrison away. The greatest sorrow is stagnant, not active. The heart
+becomes like a frozen morass. Sometimes memory slips through the crust,
+only to sink in the grim "slough of despond."
+
+Waterbury's death had unnerved her, coming as it did at a time when
+tragedy had opened the pores of her heart. He had been conscious for
+a few minutes before the messenger of a new life summoned him into the
+great beyond. He used the few minutes well. If we all lived with the
+thought that the next hour would be our last, the world would be peopled
+with angels--and hypocrites.
+
+Waterbury asked permission of his host, Colonel Desha, to see Sue alone.
+It was willingly granted. The girl, white-faced, came and sat by the bed
+in the room of many shadows; the room where death was tapping, tapping
+on the door. She had said nothing to her father regarding the events
+preceding the runaway and Waterbury's accident.
+
+Waterbury eyed her long and gravely. The heat of his great passion had
+melted the baser metal of his nature. What original alloy of gold
+he possessed had but emerged refined. His fingers, formerly pudgy,
+well-fed, had suddenly become skeletons of themselves. They were picking
+at the coverlet.
+
+"I lied about--about Garrison," he whispered, forcing life to his mouth,
+his eyes never leaving the girl's. "I lied. He was square--" Breath
+would not come. "For-forgive," he cried, suddenly in a smother of sweat.
+"Forgive--"
+
+"Gladly, willingly," whispered the girl. She was crying inwardly.
+
+His eyes flamed for an instant, and then died away. By sheer will-power
+he succeeded in stretching a hand across the coverlet, palm upward.
+"Put--put it--there," he whispered. "Will you?"
+
+She understood. It was the sporting world's token of forgiveness; of
+friendship. She laid her hand in his, gripping with a firm clasp.
+
+"Thank you," he whispered. Again his eyes flamed; again died away. The
+end was very near. Perhaps the approaching freedom of the spirit lent
+him power to read the girl's thoughts. For as he looked into her
+eyes, his own saw that she knew what lay in his. He breathed heavily,
+painfully.
+
+"Could--could you?" he whispered. "If--if you only could." There was a
+great longing, a mighty wistfulness in his voice. Death was trying to
+place its hand over his mouth. With a mighty effort Waterbury slipped
+past it. "If you only could," he reiterated. "It--it means so little to
+you, Miss Desha--so much, so much to--me!"
+
+And again the girl understood. Without a word she bent over and kissed
+him. He smiled. And so died Waterbury.
+
+Afterward, the girl remembered Waterbury's confession. So Garrison was
+honest! Somehow, she had always believed he was. His eyes, the windows
+of his soul, were not fouled. She had read weakness there, but never
+dishonesty. Yes, somehow she had always believed him honest. But he
+was married. That was different. The concrete, not the abstract, was
+paramount. All else was swamped by the fact that he was married. She
+could not believe that he had forgotten his marriage with his true
+identity. She could not believe that. Her heart was against her. Love to
+her was everything. She could not understand how one could ever forget.
+One might forget the world, but not that, not that.
+
+True to her code of judging not, she did not attempt to estimate
+Garrison. She could not bear to use the probe. There are some things too
+sacred to be dissected; so near the heart that their proximity renders
+an experiment prohibitive. She believed that Garrison loved her. She
+believed that above all. Surely he had given something in exchange for
+all that he owned of her. If in unguarded moments her conscience assumed
+the woolsack, mercy, not justice, swayed it.
+
+She realized the mighty temptation Garrison had been forced against by
+circumstances. And if he had fallen, might not she herself? Had it not
+taken all her courage to renounce--to give the girl up North the right
+of way? Now she understood the prayer, "Lead us not into temptation."
+
+Yes, it had been weakness with Garrison, not dishonor. He had been
+fighting against it all the time. She remembered that morning in the
+tennis-court--her first intimacy with him. And he had spoken of the girl
+up North. She remembered him saying: "But doesn't the Bible say to leave
+all and cleave unto your wife?"
+
+That had been a confession, though she knew it not. And she had ignored
+it, taking it as badinage, and he had been too weak to brand it truth.
+Strangely enough, she did not judge him for posing as Major Calvert's
+nephew. Strangely enough, that seemed trivial in comparison with the
+other. It was so natural for him to be the rightful heir that she could
+not realize that he was an impostor, nor apportion the fact its true
+significance. Her brain was unfit to grapple. Only her heart lived;
+lived with the passive life of stagnation. It was choked with weeds on
+the surface. She tried to patch together the broken parts of her life.
+Tried and failed. She could not. She seemed to be existing without an
+excuse; aimlessly, soullessly.
+
+After many horrible days, hideous nights, she realized that she still
+loved Garrison. Loved with a love that threatened to absorb even her
+physical existence. It seemed as if the very breath of her lungs had
+been diverted to her heart, where it became tissue-searing flame.
+
+And at Calvert House life had resolved itself into silence. The major
+and his wife were striving to live in the future; striving to live
+against Garrison's return. They were ignorant of the true cause of his
+leaving. For Sue, the keeper of the secret, had not divulged it. She had
+been left with a difficult proposition to face, and she could not face
+it. She temporized. She knew that sooner or later the truth would have
+to come out. She put it off. She could not tell, not now, not now. Each
+day only rendered it the more difficult. She could not tell.
+
+She had only to look at the old major; to look at his wife, to see that
+the blow would blast them. She had had youth to help her, and even she
+had been blasted. What chance had they? And so she said that Garrison
+and she had quarreled seriously and that in sudden anger, pique, he had
+left. Oh, yes, she knew he would return. She was quite sure of it. It
+was all so silly and over nothing, and she had no idea he would take it
+that way. And she was so sorry, so sorry.
+
+It had all been her fault. He had not been to blame. It was she, only
+she. In a thoughtless moment she had said something about his being
+dependent on his uncle, and he had fired up, affirming that he would
+show her that he was a man, and could earn his own salt. Yes, it had
+been entirely her own fault, and no one hated herself as she did. He had
+gone to prove his manhood, and she knew how stubborn he was. He would
+not return until he wished.
+
+Sue lied bravely, convincingly, whole-heartedly. Everything she did was
+done thoroughly. She would not think of the future. But she could not
+tell that Garrison was an impostor; a father of children. She could not
+tell. So she lied, and lied so well that the old major, bewildered,
+was forced to believe her. He was forced to acquiesce. He could not
+interfere. He could do nothing. It was better that his nephew should
+prove his manhood; return some time and love the girl, than that he
+should hate her for eternity.
+
+Each day he hoped to see Garrison back, but each day passed without that
+consummation. The strain was beginning to tell on him. His heart was
+bound up in the boy. If he did not return soon he would advertise,
+institute a search. He well knew the folly of youth. He was
+broad-minded, great-hearted enough not to censure the girl by word or
+act. He saw how she was suffering; growing paler daily. But why didn't
+Garrison write? All the anger, all the quarrels in the world could not
+account for his leaving like that; account for his silence.
+
+The major commenced to doubt. And his wife's words: "It's not like Sue
+to permit William to go like that. Nor like her to ever have said such a
+thing even unthinkingly. There's more than that on the girl's mind.
+She is wasting away"--but served to strengthen the doubt. Still, he was
+impotent. He could not understand. If his nephew did not wish to return,
+all the advertising in creation could not drag him back.
+
+Yes, his wife was right. There was more on the girl's mind than that.
+And it was not like Sue to act as she affirmed she had. Still, he could
+not bring himself to doubt her. He was in a quandary. It had begun to
+tell on him, on his wife; even as it had already told on the girl.
+
+And old Colonel Desha was likewise breasting a sea of trouble.
+Waterbury's death had brought financial matters to a focus. Honor
+imperatively demanded that the mortgage be settled with the dead man's
+heirs. It was only due to Sue's desperate financiering that the interest
+had been met up to the present. That it would be paid next month
+depended solely on the chance of The Rogue winning the Carter Handicap.
+Things had come to as bad a pass as that.
+
+The colonel frantically bent every effort toward getting the
+thoroughbred into condition. How he hated himself now for posting his
+all on the winter books! Now that the great trial was so near, his deep
+convictions of triumph did not look so wonderful.
+
+There were good horses entered against The Rogue. Major Calvert's Dixie,
+for instance, and Speedaway, the wonderful goer owned by that man Drake.
+Then there were half a dozen others--all from well-known stables. There
+could be no doubt that "class" would be present in abundance at the
+Carter. And only he had so much at stake. He had entered The Rogue in
+the first flush consequent on his winning the last Carter. But he must
+win this. He must. Getting him into condition entailed expense. It must
+be met. All his hopes, his fears, were staked on The Rogue. Money
+never was so paramount; the need of it so great. Fiercely he hugged his
+poverty to his breast, keeping it from his friend the major.
+
+Then, too, he was greatly worried over Sue. She was not looking well.
+He was worried over Garrison's continued absence. He was worried over
+everything. It was besetting him from all sides. Worry was causing him
+to take the lime-light from himself. He awoke to the fact that Sue was
+in very poor health. If she died--He never could finish.
+
+Taken all in all, it was a very bad time for the two oldest families
+in Cottonton. Every member was suffering silently, stoically; each in
+a different way. One striving to conceal from the other. And it all
+centered about Garrison.
+
+And then, one day when things were at their worst, when Garrison,
+unconscious of the general misery he had engendered, had completed
+Speedaway's training for the Carter, when he himself was ready for the
+fight of his life, a stranger stepped off the Cottonton express and made
+his way to the Desha homestead. He knew the colonel. He was a big, quiet
+man--Jimmie Drake.
+
+A week later and Drake had returned North. He had not said anything
+to Garrison regarding what had called him away, but the latter vaguely
+sensed that it was another attempt on the indefatigable turfman's part
+to ferret out the eminent lawyer, Mr. Snark. And when Drake, on his
+return, called Garrison into the club-house, Garrison went white-faced.
+He had just sent Speedaway over the seven furlongs in record time, and
+his heart was big with hope.
+
+Drake never wasted ammunition in preliminary skirmishing. He told the
+joke first and the story afterward.
+
+"I've been South. Seen Colonel Desha and Major Calvert," he said
+tersely.
+
+Garrison was silent, looking at him. He tried to read fate in his
+inscrutable eyes; news of some description; tried, and failed. He turned
+away his head. "Tell me," he said simply. Drake eyed him and slowly came
+forward and held out his large bloodshot hand.
+
+"Billy Garrison--'Bud'--'Kid'--William C. Dagget," he said, nodding his
+head.
+
+Garrison rose with difficulty, the sweat on his face.
+
+"William C. Dagget? Me? Me? Me?" he whispered, his head thrown forward,
+his eyes narrowed, starting at Drake. "Just God, Jimmie! Don't play with
+me----" He sat down abruptly covering his quivering face with his hands.
+
+Drake laid a hand on the heaving shoulders. "There, there, kid," he
+murmured gruffly, as if to a child, "don't go and blow up over it. Yes,
+you're Dagget. The luckiest kid in the States, and--and the damnedest.
+You've raised a muss-pile down South in Cottonton. Dagget or no Dagget,
+I'm talking straight. You've been selfish, kid. You've only been
+thinking of yourself; your regeneration; your past, your present, your
+future. You--you--you. You never thought of the folks you left down
+home; left to suffocate with the stink you raised. You cleared out
+scot-free, and, say, kid, you let a girl lie for you; lie for you. You
+did that. A girl, by heck! who wouldn't lie for the Almighty Himself.
+A girl who--who----" Drake searched frantically for a fitting simile,
+gasped, mopped his face with a lurid silk handkerchief, and flumped into
+a chair. "Well, say, kid, it's just plain hell. That's what it is."
+
+"Lied for me?" said Garrison very quietly.
+
+"That's the word. But I'll start from the time the fur commenced to fly.
+In the first place, there's no doubt about your identity. I was right.
+I've proved that. I couldn't find Snark--I guess the devil must have
+called him back home. So I took things on my own hook and went to
+Cottonton, where I moseyed round considerable. I know Colonel Desha, and
+I learned a good deal in a quiet way when I was there. I learned from
+Major Calvert that his half-sister's--your mother's--name was Loring.
+That cinched it for me. But I said nothing. They were in an awful stew
+over your absence, but I never let on, at first, that I had you bunked.
+
+"I learned, among other things, that Miss Desha had taken upon herself
+the blame of your leaving; saying that she had said something you had
+taken exception to; that you had gone to prove your manhood, kid. Your
+manhood, kid--mind that. She's a thoroughbred, that girl. Now, I
+would have backed her lie to the finish if something hadn't gone and
+happened." Drake paused significantly. "That something was that the
+major received a letter--from your father, kid."
+
+"My father?" whispered Garrison.
+
+"Um-m-m, the very party. Written from 'Frisco--on his death-bed. One
+of those old-timey, stage-climax death-bed confessions. As old as the
+mortgage on the farm business. As I remarked before some right-meaning
+chap says somewhere something about saying nothing but good of the dead.
+I'm not slinging mud. I guess there was a whole lot missing in your
+father, kid, but he tried to square himself at the finish, the same as
+we all do, I guess.
+
+"He wrote to the major, saying he had never told his son--you, kid--of
+his real name nor of his mother's family. He confessed to changing his
+name from Dagget to Garrison for the very reasons I said. Remember?
+He ended by saying he had wronged you; that he knew you would be the
+major's heir, and that if you were to be found it would be under the
+name of Garrison. That is, if you were still living. He didn't know
+anything about you.
+
+"There was a whole lot of repentance and general misery in the letter.
+I don't like to think of it overmuch. But it knocked Cottonton flatter
+than stale beer. Honest. I never saw such a time. I'm no good at telling
+a yarn, kid. It was something fierce. There was nothing but knots and
+knots; all diked up and tangles by the mile. And so I had to step in and
+straighten things out. And--and so, kid, I told the major everything;
+every scrap of your history, as far as I knew it. All you had told to
+me. I had to. Now, don't tell me I kicked in. Say I did right, kid. I
+meant to."
+
+"Yes, yes," murmured Garrison blankly. "And--and the major? What--did he
+say, Jimmie?"
+
+Drake frowned thoughtfully.
+
+"Say? Well, kid, I only wish I had an uncle like that. I only wish there
+were more folks like those Cottonton folks. I do. Say? Why, Lord, kid,
+it was one grand hallelujah! Forgive? Say," he finished, thoughtfully
+eyeing the white-faced, newly christened Garrison, "what have you ever
+done to be loved like that? They were crazy for you. Not a word was said
+about your imposition. Not a word. It was all: 'When will he be back?'
+'Where is he?' 'Telegraph!' All one great slambang of joy. And me? Well,
+I could have had that town for my own. And your aunt? She cried, cried
+when she heard all you had been through. Oh, I made a great press-agent,
+kid. And the old major--Oh, fuss! I can't tell a yarn nohow," grumbled
+Drake, stamping about at great length and vigorously using the lurid
+silk handkerchief.
+
+William C. Dagget was silent--the silence of great, overwhelming joy. He
+was shivering. "And--and Miss Desha?" he whispered at length.
+
+"Yes--Miss Desha," echoed Drake, planting wide his feet and
+contemplating the other's bent head. "Yes, Miss Desha. And why in
+blazes did you tell her you were married, eh?" he asked grimly. "Oh,
+you thought you were? Oh, yes. And you didn't deny it when you found it
+wasn't so? Oh, yes, of course. And it didn't matter whether she ate her
+heart out or not? Of course not. Oh, yes, you wanted to be clean, first,
+and all that. And she might die in the meantime. You didn't think she
+still cared for you? Now, see here, kid, that's a lie and you know it.
+It's a lie. When a girl like Miss Desha goes so far as to--Oh, fuss! I
+can't tell a yarn. But, see here, kid, I haven't your blood. I own that.
+But if I ever put myself before a girl who cared for me the way Miss
+Desha cares for you, and I professed to love her as you professed to
+love Miss Desha, than may I rot--rot, hide, hair, and bones! Now, cuss
+me out, if you like."
+
+Garrison looked up grimly.
+
+"You're right, Jimmie. I should have stood my ground and taken my dose.
+I should have written her when I discovered the truth. But--I couldn't.
+I couldn't. Listen, Jimmie, it was not selfishness, not cowardice.
+Can't you see? Can't you see? I cared too much. I was so unworthy, so
+miserable. How could I ever think she would stoop to my level? She was
+so high; I so horribly low. It was my own unworthiness choking me. It
+was not selfishness, Jimmie, not selfishness. It was despair; despair
+and misery. Don't you understand?"
+
+"Oh, fuss!" said Drake again, using the lurid silk handkerchief. Then he
+laid his hand on the other's shoulder. "I understand," he said simply.
+There was silence. Finally Drake wiped his face and cleared his throat.
+
+"And now, with your permission, we'll get down to tacks, Mr. William C.
+Dagget--"
+
+"Don't call me that, Jimmie. I'm not that--yet. I'm Billy Garrison until
+I've won the Carter Handicap--proven myself clean."
+
+"Right, kid. And that's what I wished to speak about. In the first
+place, Major Calvert knows where you are. Colonel and Miss Desha do not.
+In fact, kid," added Drake, rubbing his chin, "the major and I have a
+little plot hatched up between us. Your identity, if possible is not to
+be made known to the colonel and his daughter until the finish of the
+Carter. Understand?"
+
+"No," said Garrison flatly. "Why?"
+
+"Because, kid, you're not going to ride Speedaway. You're not going to
+ride for my stable. You're going to ride Colonel Desha's Rogue--ride as
+you never rode before. Ride and win. That's why."
+
+Garrison only stared as Drake ran on. "See here, kid, this race means
+everything to the colonel--everything in the world. Every cent he has
+is at stake; his honor, his life, his daughter's happiness. He's proud,
+cussed proud, and he's kept it mum. And the girl--Miss Desha has bucked
+poverty like a thoroughbred. I got to know the facts, picking them up
+here and there, and the major knows, too. We've got to work in the dark,
+for the colonel would die first if he knew the truth, before he would
+accept help even indirectly. The Rogue must win; must. But what
+chance has he against the major's Dixie, my Speedaway, and the Morgan
+entry--Swallow? And so the major has scratched his mount, giving out
+that Dixie has developed eczema.
+
+"Now, the colonel is searching high and low for a jockey capable of
+handling The Rogue. It'll take a good man. I recommended you. He doesn't
+know your identity, for the major and I have kept it from him. He only
+thinks you are _the_ Garrison who has come back. I have fixed it up with
+him that you are to ride his mount, and The Rogue will arrive to-morrow.
+
+"The colonel is a wreck mentally and physically; living on nerve. I've
+agreed to put the finishing touches on The Rogue, and he, knowing my
+ability and facilities, has permitted me. It's all in my hands--pretty
+near. Now, Red McGloin is up on the Morgan entry--Swallow. He used to be
+a stable-boy for Waterbury. I guess you've heard of him. He's developed
+into a first-class boy. But I want to see you lick the hide off him. The
+fight will lie between you and him. I know the rest of the field--"
+
+"But Speedaway?" cried Garrison, jumping to his feet. "Jimmie--you! It's
+too great a sacrifice; too great, too great. I know how you've longed
+to win the Carter; what it means to you; how you have slaved to earn
+it. Jimmie--Jimmie--don't tempt me. You can't mean you've scratched
+Speedaway!"
+
+"Just that, kid," said Drake grimly. "The first scratch in my life--and
+the last. Speedaway? Well, she and I will win again some other time.
+Some time, kid, when we ain't playing against a man's life and a girl's
+happiness. I'll scratch for those odds. It's for you, kid--you and the
+girl. Remember, you're carrying her colors, her life.
+
+"You'll have a good fight--but fight as you never fought before; as you
+never hope to fight again. Cottonton will watch you, kid. Don't shame
+them; don't shame me. Show 'em what you're made of. Show Red that
+a former stable-boy, no matter what class he is now, can't have the
+licking of a former master. Show 'em a has-been can come back. Show 'em
+what Garrison stands for. Show 'em your finish, kid--I'll ask no more.
+And you'll carry Jimmie Drake's heart--Oh, fuss! I can't tell a yarn,
+nohow."
+
+In silence Garrison gripped Drake's hand. And if ever a mighty
+resolution was welded in a human heart--a resolution born of love,
+everything; one that nothing could deny--it was born that moment in
+Garrison's. Born as the tears stood in his eyes, and, man as he was, he
+could not keep up; nor did he shame his manhood by denying them. "Kid,
+kid," said Drake.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+GARRISON'S FINISH.
+
+It was April 16. Month of budding life; month of hope; month of spring
+when all the world is young again; when the heart thaws out after its
+long winter frigidity. It was the day of the opening of the Eastern
+racing season; the day of the Carter Handicap.
+
+Though not one of the "classics," the Carter annually draws an
+attendance of over ten thousand; ten thousand enthusiasts who have not
+had a chance to see the ponies run since the last autumn race; those who
+had been unable to follow them on the Southern circuit. Women of every
+walk of life; all sorts and conditions of men. Enthusiasts glad to be
+out in the life-giving sunshine of April; panting for excitement;
+full to the mouth with volatile joy; throwing off the shackles of the
+business treadmill; discarding care with the ubiquitous umbrella and
+winter flannels; taking fortune boldly by the hand; returning to first
+principles; living for the moment; for the trial of skill, endurance,
+and strength; staking enough in the balances to bring a fillip to the
+heart and the blood to the cheek.
+
+It was a typical American crowd; long-suffering, giving and
+taking--principally giving--good-humored, just. All morning it came in a
+seemingly endless chain; uncoupling link by link, only to weld together
+again. All morning long, ferries, trolleys, trains were jammed with the
+race-mad throng. Coming by devious ways, for divers reasons; coming from
+all quarters by every medium; centering at last at the Queen's County
+Jockey Club.
+
+And never before in the history of the Aqueduct track had so thoroughly
+a representative body of racegoers assembled at an opening day. Never
+before had Long Island lent sitting and standing room to so impressive
+a gathering of talent, money, and family. Every one interested in the
+various phases of the turf was there, but even they only formed a small
+portion of the attendance.
+
+Rumors floated from paddock to stand and back again. The air was
+surcharged with these wireless messages, bearing no signature nor
+guarantee of authenticity. And borne on the crest of all these rumors
+was one--great, paramount. Garrison, the former great Garrison, had come
+back. He was to ride; ride the winner of the last Carter, the winner of
+a fluke race.
+
+The world had not forgotten. They remembered The Rogue's last race. They
+remembered Garrison's last race. The wise ones said that The Rogue could
+not possibly win. This time there could be no fluke, for the great Red
+McGloin was up on the favorite. The Rogue would be shown in his true
+colors--a second-rater.
+
+Speculation was rife. This Carter Handicap presented many, many features
+that kept the crowd at fever-heat. Garrison had come back. Garrison
+had been reinstated. Garrison was up on a mount he had been accused of
+permitting to win last year. Those who wield the muck-rake for the sake
+of general filth, not in the name of justice, shook their heads and
+lifted high hands to Heaven. It looked bad. Why should Garrison be
+riding for Colonel Desha? Why had Jimmie Drake transferred him at the
+eleventh hour? Why had Drake scratched Speedaway? Why had Major Calvert
+scratched Dixie? The latter was an outsider, but they had heard great
+things of her.
+
+"Cooked," said the muck-rakers wisely, and, thinking it was a show-down
+for the favorite, stacked every cent they had on Swallow. No long shots
+for them.
+
+And some there were who cursed Drake and Major Calvert; cursed long
+and intelligently--those who had bet on Speedaway and Dixie, bet on the
+play-or-pay basis, and now that the mounts were scratched, they had been
+bitten. It was entirely wrong to tempt Fortune, and then have her turn
+on you. She should always be down on the "other fellow"--not you.
+
+And then there were those, and many, who did not question, who were glad
+to know that Garrison had come back on any terms. They had liked him for
+himself. They were the weak-kneed variety who are stanch in prosperity;
+who go with the world; coincide with the world's verdict. The world had
+said Garrison was crooked. If they had not agreed, they had not denied.
+If Garrison now had been reinstated, then the world said he was honest.
+They agreed now--loudly; adding the old shibboleth of the moral coward:
+"I told you so." But still they doubted that he had "come back." A
+has-been can never come back.
+
+The conservative element backed Morgan's Swallow. Red McGloin was up,
+and he was proven class. He had stepped into Garrison's niche of fame.
+He was the popular idol now. And, as Garrison had once warned him, he
+was already beginning to pay the price. The philosophy of the exercise
+boy had changed to the philosophy of the idol; the idol who cannot
+be pulled down. And he had suffered. He had gone through part of what
+Garrison had gone through, but he also had experienced what the latter's
+inherent cleanliness had kept him from.
+
+Temptation had come Red's way; come strong without reservation. Red,
+with the hunger of the long-denied, with the unrestricted appetite of
+the intellectually low, had not discriminated. And he had suffered. His
+trainer had watched him carefully, but youth must have its fling, and
+youth had flung farther than watching wisdom reckoned.
+
+Red had not gone back. He was young yet. But the first flush of his
+manhood had gone; the cream had been stolen. His nerve was just a
+little less than it had been; his eye and hand a little less steady;
+his judgment a little less sound; his initiative, daring, a little less
+paramount. And races have been won and lost, and will be won and lost,
+when that "little Less" is the deciding breath that tips the scale.
+
+But he had no misgivings. Was he not the idol? Was he not up on Swallow,
+the favorite? Swallow, with the odds--two to one--on. He knew Garrison
+was to ride The Rogue. What did that matter? The Rogue was ten to one
+against. The Rogue was a fluke horse. Garrison was a has-been. The track
+says a has-been can never come back. Of course Garrison had been to the
+dogs during the past year--what down-and-out jockey has not gone
+there? And if Drake had transferred him to Desha, it was a case of good
+riddance. Drake was famous for his eccentric humor. But he was a sound
+judge of horse-flesh. No doubt he knew what a small chance Speedaway
+had against Swallow, and he had scratched advisedly; playing the Morgan
+entry instead.
+
+In the grand stand sat three people wearing a blue and gold ribbon--the
+Desha colors. Occasionally they were reinforced by a big man, who
+circulated between them and the paddock. The latter was Jimmie Drake.
+The others were "Cottonton," as the turfman called them. They were Major
+and Mrs. Calvert and Sue Desha.
+
+Colonel Desha was not there. He was eating his heart out back home. The
+nerve he had been living on had suddenly snapped at the eleventh hour.
+He was denied watching the race he had paid so much in every way to
+enter. The doctors had forbidden his leaving. His heart could not stand
+the excitement; his constitution could not meet the long journey North.
+And so alone, propped up in bed, he waited; waited, counting off each
+minute; more excited, wrought up, than if he had been at the track.
+
+It had been arranged that in the event of The Rogue winning, the good
+news should be telegraphed to the colonel the moment the gelding flashed
+past the judges' stand. He had insisted on that and on his daughter
+being present. Some member of the family must be there to back The Rogue
+in his game fight. And so Sue, in company with the major and his wife,
+had gone.
+
+She had taken little interest in the race. She knew what it meant, no
+one knew better than she, but somehow she had no room left for care to
+occupy. She was apathetic, listless; a striking contrast to the major
+and his wife, who could hardly repress their feelings. They knew what
+she would find at the Aqueduct track--find the world. She did not.
+
+All she knew was that Drake, whom she liked for his rough, patent
+manhood, had very kindly offered the services of his jockey; a jockey
+whom he had faith in. Who that jockey was, she did not know, nor
+overmuch care. A greater sorrow had obliterated her racing passion;
+had even ridden roughshod over the fear of financial ruin. Her mind was
+numb.
+
+For days succeeding Drake's statement to her that Garrison was not
+married she waited for some word from him. Drake had explained how
+Garrison had thought he was married. He had explained all that. She
+could never forget the joy that had swamped her on hearing it; even as
+she could never forget the succeeding days of waiting misery; waiting,
+waiting, waiting for some word. He had been proven honest, proven Major
+Calvert's nephew, proven free. What more could he ask? Then why had he
+not come, written?
+
+She could not believe he no longer cared. She could not believe that;
+rather, she would not. She gaged his heart by her own. Hers was the
+woman's portion--inaction. She must still wait, wait, wait. Still she
+must eat her heart out. Hers was the woman's portion. And if he did not
+come, if he did not write--even in imagination she could never complete
+the alternative. She must live in hope; live in hope, in faith, in
+trust, or not at all.
+
+Colonel Desha's enforced absence overcame the one difficulty Major
+Calvert and Jimmie Drake had acknowledged might prematurely explode
+their hidden identity mine. The colonel, exercising his owner's
+prerogative, would have fussed about The Rogue until the last minute.
+Of course he would have interviewed Garrison, giving him riding
+instructions, etc. Now Drake assumed the right by proxy, and Sue, after
+one eager-whispered word to The Rogue, had assumed her position in the
+grand stand.
+
+Garrison was up-stairs in the jockey's quarters of the new paddock
+structure, the lower part of which is reserved for the clerical force,
+and so she had not seen him. But presently the word that Garrison was
+to ride flew everywhere, and Sue heard it. She turned slowly to Drake,
+standing at her elbow, his eyes on the paddock.
+
+"Is it true that a jockey called Garrison is to ride to-day?" she asked,
+a strange light in her eyes. What that name meant to her!
+
+"Why, yes, I believe so, Miss Desha," replied Drake, delightfully
+innocent. "Why?"
+
+"Oh," she said slowly. "How--how queer! I mean--isn't it queer that
+two people should have the same name? I suppose this one copied it;
+imitation being the sincerest form of flattery. I hope he does the name
+justice. Do you know him? He is a good rider? What horse is he up on?"
+
+Drake, wisely enough, chose the last question. "A ten-to-one shot," he
+replied illuminatingly. "Perhaps you'll bet on him, Miss Desha, eh? It's
+what we call a hunch--coincidence or anything like that. Shall I place a
+bet for you?"
+
+The girl's eyes kindled strangely. Then she hesitated.
+
+"But--but I can't bet against The Rogue. It would not be loyal."
+
+Mrs. Calvert laughed softly.
+
+"There are exceptions, dear." In a low aside she added: "Haven't you
+that much faith in the name of Garrison? There, I know you have. I would
+be ashamed to tell you how much the major and I have up on that name.
+And you know I never bet, as a rule. It is very wrong."
+
+And so Sue, the blood in her cheeks, handed all her available cash to
+Drake to place on the name of Garrison. She would pretend it was the
+original. Just pretend.
+
+"Here they come," yelled Drake, echoed by the rippling shout of the
+crowd.
+
+The girl rose, white-faced; striving to pick out the blue and gold of
+the Desha stable.
+
+And here they came, the thirteen starters; thirteen finished examples of
+God and man's handicraft. Speed, endurance, skill, nerve, grit--all
+were there. Horse and rider trained to the second. Bone, muscle, sinew,
+class. And foremost of the string came Swallow, the favorite, Red
+McGloin, confidently smiling, sitting with the conscious ease of the
+idol who has carried off the past year's Brooklyn Handicap.
+
+Good horses there were; good and true. There were Black Knight and
+Scapegrace, Rightful and Happy Lad, Bean Eater and Emetic--the latter
+the great sprinter who was bracketed with Swallow on the book-maker's
+sheets. Mares, fillies, geldings--every offering of horse-flesh above
+three years. All striving for the glory and honor of winning this
+great sprint handicap. The monetary value was the lesser virtue. Eight
+thousand dollars for the first horse; fifteen hundred for the second;
+five hundred for the third. All striving to be at least placed within
+the money--placed for the honor and glory and standing.
+
+Last of all came The Rogue, black, lean, dangerous. Trained for the
+fight of his life from muzzle to clean-cut hoofs. Those hoofs had been
+cared for more carefully than the hands of any queen; packed every
+day in the soft, velvety red clay brought all the way from the Potomac
+River.
+
+Garrison, in the blue and gold of the Desha stable, his mouth drawn
+across his face like a taut wire, sat hunched high on The Rogue's neck.
+He looked as lean and dangerous as his mount. His seat was recognized
+instantly, before even his face could be discerned.
+
+A murmur, increasing rapidly to a roar, swung out from every foot of
+space. Some one cried "Garrison!" And "Garrison! Garrison! Garrison!"
+was caught up and flung back like the spume of sea from the surf-lashed
+coast.
+
+He knew the value of that hail, and how only one year ago his name had
+been spewed from out those selfsame laudatory mouths with venom and
+contempt. He knew his public. Adversity had been a mighty master. The
+public--they who live in the present, not the past. They who swear by
+triumph, achievement; not effort. They who have no memory for the
+deeds that have been done unless they vouch for future conquests. The
+public--fickle as woman, weak as infancy, gullible as credulity, mighty
+as fate. Yes, Garrison knew it, and deep down in his heart, though he
+showed it not, he gloried in the welcome accorded him. He had not been
+forgotten.
+
+But he had no false hopes, illusions. His had been the welcome
+vouchsafed the veteran who is hopelessly facing his last fight. They,
+perhaps, admired his grit, his optimism; admired while they pitied. But
+how many, how many, really thought he was there to win? How many thought
+he could win?
+
+He knew, and his heart did not quicken nor his pulse increase so much as
+a beat. He was cool, implacable, and dangerous as a rattler waiting for
+the opportune moment to spring. He looked neither to right nor left. He
+was deaf, impervious. He was there to win. That only.
+
+And he would win? Why not? What were the odds of ten to one? What was
+the opinion, the judgment of man? What was anything compared with what
+he was fighting for? What horse, what jockey among them all was
+backed by what he was backed with? What impulse, what stimulant, what
+overmastering, driving necessity had they compared with his? And The
+Rogue knew what was expected of him that day.
+
+It was only as Garrison was passing the grand stand during the
+preliminary warming-up process that his nerve faltered. He glanced
+up--he was compelled to. A pair of eyes were drawing his. He glanced
+up--there was "Cottonton"; "Cottonton" and Sue Desha. The girl's hands
+were tightly clenched in her lap, her head thrown forward; her eyes
+obliterating space; eating into his own. How long he looked into those
+eyes he did not know. The major, his wife, Drake--all were shut out. He
+only saw those eyes. And as he looked he saw that the eyes understood at
+last; understood all. He remembered lifting his cap. That was all.
+
+*****
+
+"They're off! They're off!" That great, magic cry; fingering at the
+heart, tingling the blood. Signal for a roar from every throat; for
+the stretching of every neck to the dislocating point; for prayers,
+imprecations, adjurations--the entire stock of nature's sentiment
+factory. Sentiment, unbridled, unleashed, unchecked. Passion given a
+kick and sent hurtling without let or hindrance.
+
+The barrier was down. They were off. Off in a smother of spume and dust.
+Off for the short seven furlongs eating up less than a minute and a half
+of time. All this preparation, all the preliminaries, the whetting of
+appetites to razor edge, the tilts with fortune, the defiance of fate,
+the moil and toil and tribulations of months--all brought to a head,
+focused on this minute and a half. All, all for one minute and a half!
+
+It had been a clean break from the barrier. But in a flash Emetic
+was away first, hugging the rail. Swallow, taking her pace with all
+McGloin's nerve and skill, had caught her before she had traveled half a
+dozen yards. Emetic flung dirt hard, but Swallow hung on, using her as a
+wind-shield. She was using the pacemaker's "going."
+
+The track was in surprisingly good condition, but there were streaks
+of damp, lumpy track throughout the long back and home-stretch. This
+favored The Rogue; told against the fast sprinters Swallow and Emetic.
+After the two-yard gap left by the leaders came a bunch of four, with
+The Rogue in the center.
+
+"Pocketed already!" yelled some derisively. Garrison never heeded.
+Emetic was the fastest sprinter there that day; a sprinter, not a
+stayer. There is a lot of luck in a handicap. If a sprinter with a light
+weight up can get away first, she may never be headed till the finish.
+But it had been a clear break, and Swallow had caught on.
+
+The pace was heart-breaking; murderous; terrific. Emetic's rider had
+taken a chance and lost it; lost it when McGloin caught him. Swallow
+was a better stayer; as fast as a sprinter. But if Emetic could not
+spread-eagle the field, she could set a pace that would try the stamina
+and lungs of Pegasus. And she did. First furlong in thirteen seconds.
+Record for the Aqueduct. A record sent flying to flinders. My! that was
+going some. Quarter-mile in twenty-four flat. Another record wiped out.
+What a pace!
+
+A great cry went up. Could Emetic hold out? Could she stay, after all?
+Could she do what she had never done before? Swallow's backers began
+to blanch. Why, why was McGloin pressing so hard? Why? why? Emetic must
+tire. Must, must, must. Why would McGloin insist on taking that pace? It
+was a mistake, a mistake. The race had twisted his brain. The fight for
+leadership had biased his judgment. If he was not careful that lean,
+hungry-looking horse, with Garrison up, would swing out from the bunch,
+fresh, unkilled by pace-following, and beat him to a froth. . . .
+
+There, there! Look at that! Look at that! God! how Garrison is riding!
+Riding as he never rode before. Has he come back? Look at him. . . . I
+told you so. I told you so. There comes that black fiend across--It's
+a foul! No, no. He's clear. He's clear. There he goes. He's clear. He's
+slipped the bunch, skinned a leader's nose, jammed against the rail.
+Look how he's hugging it! Look! He's hugging McGloin's heels. He's
+waiting, waiting. . . . There, there! It's Emetic. See, she's wet from
+head to hock. She is, she is! She's tiring; tiring fast. . . . See!
+. . . McGloin, McGloin, McGloin! You're riding, boy, riding. Good work.
+Snappy work. You've got Emetic dead to rights. You were all right in
+following her pace. I knew you were. I knew she would tire. Only two
+furlongs--What? What's that? . . . Garrison? That plug Rogue? . . . Oh,
+Red, Red! . . . Beat him, Red, beat him! It's only a bluff. He's not in
+your class. He can't hang on. . . . Beat him, Red, beat him! Don't let a
+has-been put it all over you! . . . Ride, you cripple, ride! . . . What?
+Can't you shake him off? . . . Slug him! . . . Watch out! He's trying
+for the rail. Crowd him, crowd him! . . . What's the matter with you?
+. . . Where's your nerve? You can't shake him off! Beat him down the
+stretch! He's fresh. He wasn't the fool to follow pace, like you. . . .
+What's the matter with you? He's crowding you--look out, there! Jam him!
+. . . He's pushing you hard. . . . Neck and neck, you fool. That black
+fiend can't be stopped. . . . Use the whip! Red, use the whip! It's all
+you've left. Slug her, slug her! That's it, that's it! Slug speed into
+her. Only a furlong to go. . . . Come on, Red, come on! . . .
+
+Here they come, in a smother of dust. Neck and neck down the stretch.
+The red and white of the Morgan stable; the blue and gold of the Desha.
+It's Swallow. No, no, it's The Rogue. Back and forth, back and forth
+stormed the rival names. The field was pandemonium. "Cottonton" was
+a mass of frantic arms, raucous voices, white faces. Drake, his pudgy
+hands whanging about like semaphore-signals in distress, was blowing
+his lungs out: "Come on, kid come on! You've got him now! He can't last!
+Come on, come on!--for my sake, for your sake, for anybody's sake, but
+only come!"
+
+Game Swallow's eyes had a blue film over them. The heart-breaking
+pace-following had told. Red's error of judgment had told. The "little
+less" had told. A frenzied howl went up. "Garrison! Garrison! Garrison!"
+The name that had once meant so much now meant--everything. For in a
+swirl of dust and general undiluted Hades, the horses had stormed past
+the judges' stand. The great Carter was lost and won.
+
+Swallow, with a thin streamer of blood threading its way from her
+nostrils, was a beaten horse; a game, plucky, beaten favorite. It was
+all over. Already The Rogue's number had been posted. It was all over;
+all over. The finish of a heart-breaking fight; the establishing of a
+new record for the Aqueduct. And a name had been replaced in its former
+high niche. The has-been had come back.
+
+And "Cottonton," led by a white-faced girl and a big, apoplectic
+turfman, were forgetting dignity, decorum, and conventionality as hand
+in hand they stormed through the surging eruption of humanity fighting
+to get a chance at little Billy Garrison's hand.
+
+And as, saddle on shoulder, he stood on the weighing-scales and caught
+sight of the oncoming hosts of "Cottonton" and read what the girl's
+eyes held, then, indeed, he knew all that his finish had earned him--the
+beginning of a new life with a new name; the beginning of one that the
+lesson he had learned, backed by the great love that had come to him,
+would make--paradise. And his one unuttered prayer was: "Dear God, make
+me worthy, make me worthy of them--all!"
+
+Aftermath was a blur to "Garrison." Great happiness can obscure, befog
+like great sorrow. And there are some things that touch the heart too
+vitally to admit of analyzation. But long afterward, when time, mighty
+adjuster of the human soul, had given to events their true proportions,
+that meeting with "Cottonton" loomed up in all its greatness, all its
+infinite appeal to the emotions, all its appeal to what is highest and
+worthiest in man. In silence, before all that little world, Sue Desha
+had put her arms about his neck. In silence he had clasped the major's
+hand. In silence he had turned to his aunt; and what he read in her
+misty eyes, read in the eyes of all, even the shrewd, kindly eyes of
+Drake the Silent and in the slap from his congratulatory paw, was all
+that man could ask; more than man could deserve.
+
+Afterward the entire party, including Jimmie Drake, who was regarded
+as the grand master of Cottonton by this time, took train for New York.
+Regarding the environment, it was somewhat like a former ride "Garrison"
+had taken; regarding the atmosphere, it was as different as hope from
+despair. Now Sue was seated by his side, her eyes never once leaving his
+face. She was not ordinarily one to whom words were ungenerous, but now
+she could not talk. She could only look and look, as if her happiness
+would vanish before his eyes. "Garrison" was thinking, thinking of many
+things. Somehow, words were unkind to him, too; somehow, they seemed
+quite unnecessary.
+
+"Do you remember this time a year ago?" he asked gravely at length. "It
+was the first time I saw you. Then it was purgatory to exist, now it
+is heaven to live. It must be a dream. Why is it that those who
+deserve least, invariably are given most? Is it the charity of Heaven,
+or--what?" He turned and looked into her eyes. She smuggled her hand
+across to his.
+
+"You," she exclaimed, a caressing, indolent inflection in her soft
+voice. "You." That "you" is a peculiar characteristic caress of the
+Southerner. Its meaning is infinite. "I'm too happy to analyze," she
+confided, her eyes growing dark. "And it is not the charity of Heaven,
+but the charity of--man."
+
+"You mustn't say that," he whispered. "It is you, not me. It is you who
+are all and I nothing. It is you."
+
+She shook her head, smiling. There was an air of seductive luxury about
+her. She kept her eyes unwaveringly on his. "You," she said again.
+
+"And there's old Jimmie Drake," added "Garrison" musingly, at length,
+a light in his eyes. He nodded up the aisle where the turfman was
+entertaining the major and his wife. "There's a man, Sue, dear. A man
+whose friendship is not a thing of condition nor circumstance. I will
+always strive to earn, keep it as I will strive to be worthy of your
+love. I know what it cost Drake to scratch Speedaway. I will not, cannot
+forget. We owe everything to him, dear; everything."
+
+"I know," said the girl, nodding. "And I, we owe everything to him. He
+is sort of revered down home like a Messiah, or something like that.
+You don't know those days of complete misery and utter hopelessness, and
+what his coming meant. He seemed like a great big sun bursting through
+a cyclone. I think he understands that there is, and always will be, a
+very big, warm place in Cottonton's heart for him. At least, we-all have
+told him often enough. He's coming down home with us now--with you."
+
+He turned and looked steadily into her great eyes. His hand went out to
+meet hers.
+
+"You," whispered the girl again.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Garrison's Finish, by W. B. M. Ferguson
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