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.