“Don’t get busty, kid.  I don’t know how you ever come to do it, but it’s a serious game, a dirty game, and I guess it may mean jail for you, all right.”

“What do you mean?” Garrison’s pinched face had gone slowly white.  A vague premonition of impending further disaster possessed him, amounting almost to an obsession.  “What do you mean, Jimmy?” he reiterated tensely.

Drake was silent, still scrutinizing him.

“Kid,” he said finally, “I don’t like to think it of you—­but I know what made you do it.  You were sore on Waterbury; sore for losing.  You wanted to get hunk on something.  But I tell you, kid, there’s no deal too rotten for a man who poisons a horse—­”

“Poisons a horse,” echoed Garrison mechanically.  “Poisons a horse.  Good Lord, Drake!” he cried fiercely, in a sudden wave of passion and understanding, jumping from his chair, “you dare to say that I poisoned Sis!  You dare—­”

“No, I don’t.  The paper does.”

“The paper lies!  Lies, do you hear?  Let me see it!  Let me see it!  Where does it say that?  Where, where?  Show it to me if you can!  Show it to me—­”

His eyes slowly widened in horror, and his mouth remained agape, as he hastily scanned the contents of an article in big type on the first page.  Then the extra dropped from his nerveless fingers, and he mechanically seated himself at the table, his eyes vacant.  To his surprise, he was horribly calm.  Simply his nerves had snapped; they could torture him no longer by stretching.

“It’s not enough to have—­have her die, but I must be her poisoner,” he said mechanically.

“It’s all circumstantial evidence, or nearly so,” added Drake, shifting from one foot to the other.  “You were the only one who would have a cause to get square.  And Crimmins says he gave you permission to see her alone.  Even the stable-hands say that.  It looks bad, kid.  Here, don’t take it so hard.  Get a cinch on yourself,” he added, as he watched Garrison’s blank eyes and quivering face.

“I’m all right.  I’m all right,” muttered Billy vaguely, passing a hand over his throbbing temples.

Drake was silent, fidgeting uneasily.

“Kid,” he blurted out at length, “it looks as if you were all in.  Say, let me be your bank-roll, won’t you?  I know you lost every cent on Sis, no matter what they say.  I’ll give you a blank check, and you can fill it out—­”

“No, thanks, Jimmy.”

“Don’t be touchy, kid.  You’d do the same for me—­”

“I mean it, Drake.  I don’t want a cent.  I’m not hard up.  Thanks all the same.”  Garrison’s rag of honor was fluttering in the wind of his pride.

“Well,” said Drake, finally and uncomfortably, “if you ever want it, Billy, you know where to come for it.  I want to go down on the books as your friend, hear?  Mind that.  So-long.”

“So-long, Jimmy.  And I won’t forget your stand.”

Garrison continued staring at the floor.  This, then, was the reason why the sporting world had cut him dead; for a horse-poisoner is ranked in the same category as that assigned to the horse-stealer of the Western frontier.  There, a man’s horse is his life; to the turfman it is his fortune—­one and the same.  And so Crimmins had testified that he had permitted him, Garrison, to see Sis alone!