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