unclean, foreign to his state,
prosperity had now decked it out in her most sensuous, alluring
garments. Red's moral diatribe had been correct. Garrison had followed
the band-wagon to the finish, never asking where it might lead; never
caring. He had youth, reputation, money--he could never overdraw that
account. And so the modern pied piper played, and little Garrison
blindly danced to the music with the other fools; danced on and on until
he was swallowed up in the mountain.

Then he awoke too late, as they all awake; awoke to find that his vigor
had been sapped by early suppers and late breakfasts; his finances
depleted by slow horses and fast women; his nerve frayed to ribbons by
gambling. And then had come that awful morning when he first commenced
to cough. Would he, could he, ever forget it?

Billy Garrison huddled down now in the roaring train as he thought of
it. It was always before him, a demoniacal obsession--that morning when
he coughed, and a bright speck of arterial blood stood out like a tardy
danger-signal against the white of his handkerchief; it was leering at
him, saying: "I have been here always, but you have chosen to be blind."

Consumption--the jockey's Old Man of the Sea--had arrived at last. He
had inherited the seeds from his father; he had assiduously cultivated
them by making weight against all laws of nature; by living against laws
of God and man. Now they had been punished as they always are. Nature
had struck, struck hard.

That had been the first warning, and Garrison did not heed it. Instead
of quitting the game, taking what little assets he had managed to save
from the holocaust, and living quietly, striving for a cure, he kicked
over the traces. The music of the pied piper was still in his ears;
twisting his brain. He gritted his teeth. He would not give in. He would
show that he was master. He would fight this insidious vitality vampire;
fight and conquer.

Besides, he had to make money. The thought of going back to a pittance a
year sickened him. That pittance had once been a fortune to him. But his
appetite had not been gorged, satiated; rather, it had the resilience of
crass youth; jumping the higher with every indulgence. It increased
in ratio with his income. He had no one to guide him; no one to compel
advice with a whip, if necessary. He knew it all. So he kept his curse
secret. He would pile up one more fortune, retain it this time, and
then retire. But nature had balked