He shivered through sheer nervous exhaustion, though the night was warm for mid-April.  He rummaged in his pocket.

“One dollar in bird-seed,” he mused grimly, counting the coins under the violet glare of a neighboring arc light.  “All that’s between me and the morgue.  Did I ever think it would come to that?  Well, I need a bracer.  Here goes ten for a drink.  Can only afford bar whisky.”

He was standing on the corner of Twenty-fifth Street, and unconsciously he turned into the cafe of the Hoffman House.  How well he knew its every square inch!  It was filled with the usual sporting crowd, and Garrison entered as nonchalantly as if his arrival would merit the same commotion as in the long ago.  He no longer cared.  His depression had dropped from him.  The lights, the atmosphere, the topics of conversation, discussion, caused his blood to flow like lava through his veins.  This was home, and all else was forgotten.  He was not the discarded jockey, but Billy Garrison, whose name on the turf was one to conjure with.

And then, even as he had awakened from his dream on Broadway, he now awoke to an appreciation of the immensity of his fall from grace.  He knew fully two-thirds of those present.  Some there were who nodded, some kindly, some pityingly.  Some there were who cut him dead, deliberately turning their backs or accurately looking through the top of his hat.

Billy’s square chin went up to a point and his under lip came out.  He would not be driven out.  He would show them.  He was as honest as any there; more honest than many; more foolish than all.  He ordered a drink and seated himself by a table, indifferently eyeing the shifting crowd through the fluttering curtain of tobacco-smoke.

The staple subject of conversation was the Carter Handicap, and he sensed rather than noted the glances of the crowd as they shifted curiously to him and back again.  At first he pretended not to notice them, but after a certain length of time his oblivion was sincere, for retrospect came and claimed him for its own.

He was aroused by footsteps behind him; they wavered, stopped, and a large hand was laid on his shoulder.

“Hello, kid!  You here, too?”

He looked up quickly, though he knew the voice.  It was Jimmy Drake, and he was looking down at him, a queer gleam in his inscrutable eyes.  Garrison nodded without speaking.  He noticed that the book-maker had not offered to shake hands, and the knowledge stung.  The crowd was watching them curiously, and Drake waved off, with a late sporting extra he carried, half a dozen invitations to liquidate.

“Kid,” he said, lowering his voice, his hand still on Garrison’s shoulder, “what did you come here for?  Why don’t you get away?  Waterbury may be here any minute.”

“What’s that to me?” spat out Billy venomously.  “I’m not afraid of him.  No call to be.”

Drake considered, the queer look still in his eyes.