ll--just this once you'll have your way!"

So they took the elevated to Seventy-sixth Street and walked through the
old neighborhood to the printery. The familiar streets, which secretly
bore the print of every size shoe he had worn since he was a tiny
toddling fellow, made him meditative, almost sad.

"It seems ages since I was here!" he remarked. "And yet it's like
yesterday. What have I been doing? Dreaming? Will I walk into the
printery, and will you come in with the 'Landing of the Pilgrims'?"

Myra laughed, both glad and sad.

"I should have charged you more," said Joe, brusquely. "Fifty cents was
too little for that job."

"I told you it would ruin your business, Joe." Strangely then they
thought of the fire ... her order had been his last piece of business
before the tragedy.

They walked east on Eighty-first Street and stopped before the old loft
building. A new sign was riveted on the bulletin-board in the doorway.

MARTIN BRIGGS
SUCCESSOR TO
JOE BLAINE & HIS MEN.

Joe looked at it, and started.

"It's no dream, Myra," he sighed. "Times have changed, and we, too, have
changed."

Then they went up the elevator to the clash and thunder on the eighth
floor. And they felt more and more strange, double, as it were--the old
Myra and the old Joe walking with the new Myra and the new Joe. Myra
felt a queerness about her heart, a subtle sense of impending events; of
great dramatic issues. Something that made her want to cry.

Then they stood a moment before the dirty door, and Joe said:

"Shall I? Shall I rouse 'em with the bell? Shall I break in on their
peaceful lives?"

"Rouse away!" cried Myra. "Your hour has struck!"

He pulled the door, the bell rang sharply, and they stepped in. As of
old, the tremble, the clatter, the flash of machines, the damp smell of
printed sheets, swallowed them up--made them a quivering part of the
place. And how little it had changed! They stood, almost choking with
the unchanging change of things. As if the fire had never been! As if
Tenth Street had never been!

Then at once the spell was broken. A pressman spied Joe and loosed a
yell:

"_It's the old man_!"

His press stopped; his neighbors' presses stopped; as the yell went down
the room, "Joe! Joe! The old man!" press after press paused until only
the clatter and swing of the overhead belting was heard. And the men
came running up.

"Mr.