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