Upon _his_ small portion of the map, that gentleman wooed sleep in vain
for hours. Presently he arose from his tossed bed, dressed quietly,
slipped out of the big door and walked with long, swinging steps down to
the "Clarion" Building. There it stood, a plexus of energies, in the
midst of darkness and sleep. Eye-like, its windows peered vigilantly out
into the city. A door opened to emit a voice that bawled across the way
some profane demand for haste in the delivery of "that grub"; and
through the shaft of light Hal could see brisk figures moving, and hear
the roar and thrill of the press sealing its irrevocable message.
Again he felt, with a pride so profound that its roots struck down into
the depths of humility, his own responsibility to all that straining
life and energy and endeavor. He, the small atom, alone in the night,
_was_ the "Clarion." Those men, the fighting fellowship of the office,
were rushing and toiling and coordinating their powers to carry out some
ideal still dimly inchoate in his brain. What mattered his little pangs?
There was a man's test to meet, and the man within him stretched
spiritual muscles for the trial.
"If I could only be sure what's right," he said within himself, voicing
the doubt of every high-minded adventurer upon unbeaten paths. Sharply,
and, as it seemed to him, incongruously, he wondered that he had never
learned to pray; not knowing that, in the unfinished phrase he had
uttered true prayer. A chill breeze swept down upon him. Looking up into
the jeweled heavens he recalled from the far distance of memory, the
prayer of a great and simple soul,--
"Make thou my spirit pure and clear
As are the frosty skies."
Hal set out for home, ready now for a few hours' sleep. At a blind
corner he all but collided with a man and a woman, walking at high
speed. The woman half turned, flinging him a quick and silvery
"Good-evening." It was Milly Neal. The man with her was Max Veltman.
CHAPTER XIX
DONNYBROOK
Worthington began to find the "Clarion" amusing. It blared a new note.
Common matter of everyday acceptance which no other paper in town had
ever considered as news, became, when trumpeted from between the rampant
roosters, vital with interest. And whithersoever it directed the public
attention, some highly respectable private privilege winced and snarled.
Worthington did not particularly love the "Clarion" for the enemies it
made. But it read it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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