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.