dered if they had ever
been. He did not miss them--hardly noticed any change. New buildings
fitted into the old niches as perfectly as though from the first they
had been ordained for those particular spots. They did not look at all
the upstarts that all new buildings in Kansas did.

He hurried on to Park Row, and found himself surrounded by the very
newsboys he had left. Not one of them had grown a day older. The lanky
one and the lame one and the little one were there. Perhaps it was
because they had always been as old as it is possible for a boy to be,
that they were now no older. They were crying the same news to the same
indifferent horde scurrying past them. Their noisy shouting made
Galbraithe feel more than ever like a cub reporter. It was only
yesterday that his head was swirling with the first mad excitement of
it.

Across the street the door stood open through which he had passed so
many times. Above it he saw the weatherbeaten sign which had always been
weatherbeaten. The little brick building greeted him as hospitably as an
open fire at home. He knew every inch of it, from the outside sill to
the city room, and every inch was associated in his mind with some big
success or failure. If he came back as a vagrant spirit a thousand years
from now he would expect to find it just as it was. A thousand years
back this spot had been foreordained for it. Lord, the rooted stability
of this old city.

He had forgotten that he no longer had quarters in town, and must secure
a room. He was still carrying his dress-suit case, but he couldn't
resist the temptation of first looking in on the old crowd and shaking
hands. He hadn't kept in touch with them except that he still read
religiously every line of the old sheet, but he had recognized the work
of this man and that, and knew from what he had already seen that
nothing inside any more than outside could be changed. It was about nine
o'clock, so he would find Hartson, the city editor, going over the rival
morning papers, his keen eyes alert to discover what the night staff had
missed. As he hurried up the narrow stairs his heart was as much in his
mouth as it had been the first day he was taken on the staff. Several
new office boys eyed him suspiciously, but he walked with such an air of
familiarity that they allowed him to pass unquestioned. At the entrance
to the sacred precinct of the city editor's room he paused with all his
old-time hesitancy. Even after working