Each day he hoped to see Garrison back, but each day passed without that consummation.  The strain was beginning to tell on him.  His heart was bound up in the boy.  If he did not return soon he would advertise, institute a search.  He well knew the folly of youth.  He was broad-minded, great-hearted enough not to censure the girl by word or act.  He saw how she was suffering; growing paler daily.  But why didn’t Garrison write?  All the anger, all the quarrels in the world could not account for his leaving like that; account for his silence.

The major commenced to doubt.  And his wife’s words:  “It’s not like Sue to permit William to go like that.  Nor like her to ever have said such a thing even unthinkingly.  There’s more than that on the girl’s mind.  She is wasting away”—­but served to strengthen the doubt.  Still, he was impotent.  He could not understand.  If his nephew did not wish to return, all the advertising in creation could not drag him back.

Yes, his wife was right.  There was more on the girl’s mind than that.  And it was not like Sue to act as she affirmed she had.  Still, he could not bring himself to doubt her.  He was in a quandary.  It had begun to tell on him, on his wife; even as it had already told on the girl.

And old Colonel Desha was likewise breasting a sea of trouble.  Waterbury’s death had brought financial matters to a focus.  Honor imperatively demanded that the mortgage be settled with the dead man’s heirs.  It was only due to Sue’s desperate financiering that the interest had been met up to the present.  That it would be paid next month depended solely on the chance of The Rogue winning the Carter Handicap.  Things had come to as bad a pass as that.

The colonel frantically bent every effort toward getting the thoroughbred into condition.  How he hated himself now for posting his all on the winter books!  Now that the great trial was so near, his deep convictions of triumph did not look so wonderful.

There were good horses entered against The Rogue.  Major Calvert’s Dixie, for instance, and Speedaway, the wonderful goer owned by that man Drake.  Then there were half a dozen others—­all from well-known stables.  There could be no doubt that “class” would be present in abundance at the Carter.  And only he had so much at stake.  He had entered The Rogue in the first flush consequent on his winning the last Carter.  But he must win this.  He must.  Getting him into condition entailed expense.  It must be met.  All his hopes, his fears, were staked on The Rogue.  Money never was so paramount; the need of it so great.  Fiercely he hugged his poverty to his breast, keeping it from his friend the major.

Then, too, he was greatly worried over Sue.  She was not looking well.  He was worried over Garrison’s continued absence.  He was worried over everything.  It was besetting him from all sides.  Worry was causing him to take the lime-light from himself.  He awoke to the fact that Sue was in very poor health.  If she died—­He never could finish.