can't escape the
responsibility because of my sin. It was your paper that helped fool
her. She believed in the paper, and in your father."

"The Relief Pills advertising is out. That much I'll tell you."

"Now that it's done its work. Not enough! You and I can't bring Milly
back to life, Mr. Surtaine, but we can save other lives in peril. God
has given you your chance, in this epidemic."

"How do you know about the epidemic?"

"Hasn't it taken Mr. Hale, the only friend I've got in the world? And
won't it take its hundreds of other lives unless warning is given? Why
doesn't the 'Clarion' speak out, Mr. Surtaine? _Why is that story
ordered killed?_"

"Consideration of policy which--"

"Policy! Oh, my God! And the people dying! Harrington Surtaine,"--his
eyes blazed into the other's with the flame of fanaticism,--"I tell you,
if you don't accept this opportunity that the Lord gives you, you and
your paper are damned. Do you know what it means to damn the soul of a
paper? Why, man, there are people who believe in the 'Clarion' like
gospel."

Hal got to his feet. "Veltman, I dare say you mean well. But you don't
understand this."

"Don't I!" The face took on a sudden appalling savagery. "Don't I know
you're bought and paid for! Sold out! That's what you've done. A
bargain! A bargain! Pay my little price and I'll do your meanest
bidding. I'd rather have hell burning at my heart as it burns now than
what you've got rotting at yours, young Surtaine."

The tensity of Hal's restraint broke. With one powerful effort he sent
the foreman whirling through the open door into the hall, slammed the
door after him, and stood shaking. He heard and felt the jar of
Veltman's body as it struck the wall, and slumped to the floor; then the
slow limp of his retreating footsteps. With a seething brain he returned
to his proof--and shuddered away from it. There was blood spattered over
the print. Hurriedly he thrust it aside and rang for a fresh galley. But
the red spots rose between his eyes and the work, like an accusation,
like a prophecy. Of a sudden he beheld this great engine of print which
had been, first, the caprice of his last flicker of irresponsible and
headlong youth, then the very mould in which his eager and ambitious
manhood was to form and fulfill itself--he beheld this vast mechanism
blazingly illumined as with some inner fire, and now become a terrific
genius, potent beyond the powers of humanity, working out the dir