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Updated: June 26, 2025
Ladies and gentlemen," he continued, with an oratorical wave of his hand towards the Colonel, who had bowed gravely to each person in turn to whom he was introduced, "this is my friend Colonel Bill Jarvis, the finest horseman and the most gallant young turfman between the Ohio River and the Gulf of Mexico."
It had been impossible to lose the ubiquitous Mr. Waterbury, but this evening The Rogue had evinced premonitory symptoms of a distemper, and the greatly exercised colonel had induced the turfman to ride over and have a look at him. This left Sue absolutely unfettered, the first occasion in a week. She was of the kind who fought out trouble silently, but not placidly.
He was a devotee of the turf, and this disposition led him early in life to the development of fast horses and a breeder of blooded stock. He was a turfman of the old school, and there were but few courses in the South that had not tested the mettle of his stock.
And "Cottonton," led by a white-faced girl and a big, apoplectic turfman, were forgetting dignity, decorum, and conventionality as hand in hand they stormed through the surging eruption of humanity fighting to get a chance at little Billy Garrison's hand.
Thus encouraged, the girl began, and she did tell it in her own way. But it was not a brief way, and both Mr. Gordon and Betty asked questions and that, too, increased the difficulty of Ida's telling her story. She had been the only living child of Gwynne Bellethorne, who had been a horse breeder and sometimes a turfman in one of the lower English counties.
That the turfman had motives other than mere friendship and regard when proffering his advice and financial assistance, the colonel never suspected. It was a further manifestation of his childish streak and his ignorance of his fellow man. His great fault was in estimating his neighbor by his own moral code.
He thought that he had voluntarily given up Sue's society; given it up for the sake of saving his skin; for the fear of meeting Waterbury. Time and time again he determined to face the turfman and learn the worst. Cowardice always stepped in. Presently Waterbury would leave for the North, and things then would be as they had been.
The sleepy old mediæval town on this occasion rouses itself from its dreams of the past and awakens to welcome the crowd of Norman farmers who come flocking in, clad for the most part in the national blue blouse, but still bearing about their persons those unmistakable though quite indescribable marks by which the turfman can recognize at a glance and under any costume the man whose business is with horses.
It was no easy task he had set himself, but he did not falter by the wayside. Three great stimulants he had health, the thought of Sue Desha, and the practical assistance of Jimmie Drake. It was a month, dating from the memorable meeting with the turfman, before Garrison was able to leave the hospital.
During that period of ardent, laborious youth, he faithfully shut himself up in libraries, attended public lectures, and gave himself a solid foundation of learning, which sometimes awakened surprise when discovered under the elegant frivolity of the gay turfman. But while arming himself for the battle of life, he lost, little by little, what was more essential than the best weapons-true courage.
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