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