The Bureau of Inside Information and his companion looked up as Billy Garrison stood over them, hands in pockets.  Both men had been drinking.  Drake and half the cafe’s occupants had drifted out.

“Which of you gentlemen just now gave his opinion of Billy Garrison?” asked the jockey quietly.

“I did, neighbor.  Been roped in, too?” Inside Information splayed out his legs, and, with a very blase air, put his thumbs in the armholes of his execrable vest.  He owned a rangy frame and a loose mouth.  He was showing the sights of Gotham to a friend, and was proud of his knowledge.  But he secretly feared New York because he did not know it.

“Oh, it was you?” snapped Garrison venomously.  “Well, I don’t know your name, but mine’s Billy Garrison, and you’re a liar!” He struck Inside Information a whack across the face that sent him a tumbled heap on the floor.

There is no one so dangerous as a coward.  There is nothing so dangerous as ignorance.  The New Englander had heard much of Gotham’s undercurrent and the brawls so prevalent there.  He had heard and feared.  He had looked for them, fascination in his fear, but till the present had never experienced one.  He had heard that sporting men carried guns and were quick to use them; that when the lie was passed it meant the hospital or the morgue.  He was thoroughly ignorant of the ways of a great city, of the world; incapable of meeting a crisis; of apportioning it at its true value.  And so now he overdid it.

As Garrison, a contemptuous smile on his face, turned away, and started to draw a handkerchief from his hip pocket, the New Englander, thinking a revolver was on its way, scrambled to his feet, wildly seized the heavy spirit-bottle, and let fly at Garrison’s head.  There was whisky, muscle, sinew, and fear behind the shot.

As Billy turned about to ascertain whether or not his opponent meant fight by rising from under the table, the heavy bottle landed full on his temple.  He crumpled up like a withered leaf, and went over on the floor without even a sigh.

It was two weeks later when Garrison regained full consciousness; opened his eyes to gaze upon blank walls, blank as the ceiling.  He was in a hospital, but he did not know it.  He knew nothing.  The past had become a blank.  An acute attack of brain-fever had set in, brought on by the excitement he had undergone and finished by the smash from the spirit-bottle.

There followed many nights when doctors shook their heads and nurses frowned; nights when it was thought little Billy Garrison would cross the Great Divide; nights when he sat up in the narrow cot, his hands clenched as if holding the reins, his eyes flaming as in his feverish imagination he came down the stretch, fighting for every inch of the way; crying, pleading, imploring:  “Go it, Sis; go it!  Take the rail!  Careful, careful!  Now—­now let her out; let her out!  Go, you cripple, go—­” All the jargon of the turf.