don't any of you know what has become of
Hartson?"

"Haydon would probably remember him--"

"Haydon?" broke in Galbraithe. "Is he here?"

He looked wistfully about the room to the corner where the exchange
editor used to sit.

"He died last spring," said Green. "Guess he was the last leaf on the
tree."

"He came on five years ahead of me," said Galbraithe. "He and I did the
barrel murders together."

"What was that story?" inquired Harding.

Galbraithe looked at Harding to make sure this was not some fool joke.
At the time nothing else had been talked of in New York for a month, and
he and Haydon had made something of a name for themselves for the work
they did on it. Harding was both serious and interested--there could be
no doubt about that.

The details were as fresh in Galbraithe's mind as though it were
yesterday. But what he was just beginning to perceive was that this was
so because he had been away from New York. To those living on here and
still playing the old game that story had become buried, even as
tradition, in the multiplicity of subsequent stories. These younger men
who had superseded him and his fellows, already had their own big
stories. They came every day between the dawn and the dark, and then
again between the dark and the dawn. Day after day they came
unceasingly, at the end of a week dozens of them, at the end of a month
hundreds, at the end of a year thousands. It was fifteen hundred days
ago that he had been observing the manifold complications of these
million people, and since that time a thousand volumes had been written
about as many tragedies enacted in the same old setting. Time here was
measured in hours, not years. The stage alone remained unchanged.

Galbraithe made his feet, so dazed that he faltered as with the palsy.
Harding took his arm.

"Steady, old man," he cautioned. "You'd better come out and have a
drink."

Galbraithe shook his head. He felt sudden resentment at the part they
were forcing upon him.

"I'm going back home," he announced.

"Come on," Harding encouraged him. "We'll drink to the old days, eh?"

"Sure," chimed in Green. The others, too, rose and sought their hats.

"I won't," replied Galbraithe, stubbornly, "I'm going back home, I tell
you. And in ten years I'll be twenty-five years younger than any of
you."

He spoke with some heat. Harding laughed but Green grew sober. He placed
his hand on Galbraithe's arm.

"Right," he said. "Get out,