“I can’t believe it.  I can’t believe it,” he whispered, wide-eyed.  “It is too good to be true.  It means too much.  You’re sure you’re right, Jimmie?  It means I’m proven clean, proven square.  It means reinstatement on the turf.  Means—­everything.”

“All that, kid,” said Drake.  “I thought you knew.”

Garrison hugged his knees in a paroxysm of silent joy.

“But—­Waterbury?” he puzzled at length.  “He knew I had been exonerated.  And yet—­yet he must have said something to the contrary to Miss Desha.  She knew all along that I was Garrison; knew when I didn’t know myself.  But she thought me square.  But Waterbury must have said something.  I can never forget her saying when I confessed:  ‘It’s true, then.’  I can never forget that, and the look in her eyes.”

“Aye, Waterbury,” mused Drake soberly.  He eyed Garrison.  “You know he’s dead,” he said simply.  He nodded confirmation as the other stared, white-faced.  “Died this morning after he was thrown.  Fractured skull.  I had word.  Some right-meaning chap says somewhere something about saying nothing but good of the dead, kid.  If Waterbury tried to queer you, it was through jealousy.  I understand he cared something for Miss Desha.  He had his good points, like every man.  Think of them, kid, not the bad ones.  I guess the bookkeeper up above will credit us with all the times we’ve tried to do the square, even if we petered out before we’d made good.  Trying counts something, kid.  Don’t forget that.”

“Yes, he had his good points,” whispered Garrison.  “I don’t forget, Jimmie.  I don’t forget that he has a cleaner bill of moral health than I have.  I was an impostor.  That I can’t forget; cannot wipe out.”

“I was coming to that,” Drake scratched his grizzled head elaborately.  “I didn’t say anything when you were unwinding that yarn, kid, but it sounded mighty tangled to me.”

“How?”

“How?  Why, we ain’t living in fairy-books to-day.  It’s straight hard life.  And there ain’t any fools, as far as I can see, who are allowed to take up air and space.  I’ve heard of Major Calvert, and his brains were all there the last time I heard of him—­”

“What do you mean?” Garrison bored his eyes into Drake’s.

“Why, I mean, kid, that blood is thicker than water, and leave it to a woman to see through a stone wall.  I don’t believe you could palm yourself off to the major and his wife as their nephew.  It’s not reasonable nohow.  I don’t believe any one could fool any family.”

“But I did!” Garrison was staring blankly.  “I did, Jimmie!  Remember I had the cooked-up proofs.  Remember that they had never seen the real nephew—­”

“Oh, shucks!  What’s the odds?  Blood’s blood.  You don’t mean to say a man wouldn’t know his own sister’s child?  Living in the house with him?  Wouldn’t there be some likeness, some family trait, some characteristic?  Are folks any different from horses?  No, no, it might happen in stories, but not life, not life.”