Dave.... What was it Dave had said? There was an importance in the words. "_One man can't change the world, Terry._" That was it. Bryan considered the remark now, intently. Was that what he really wanted to do--change the world? He groped among old ideals and ambitions for the answer. In the beginning he had wanted to create--to create by writing about people, about life. But to write about life required knowing it. He had become a reporter. What he had learned of life was evilness, greed, suffering, ignorance. He could not write of that and still create as he had dreamed. But he could fight it. He could fight it wherever he found it, little by little. And he had fought. It was all that had kept him going. A fool's mission, doomed to failure. Dave was right. Bryan had his answer now. He didn't want to change the world. He wanted to do something even more impossible--he wanted to make a world of his own. He grinned sourly and flipped the remains of the cigarette away. Hailing a cab, then, he rode to the _Courier_ Building. * * * * * The city room was filled with the old familiar clamor, the rattle of typewriters and teletypes, the shrilling of telephones, the undulant babble of voices. Bryan waved in answer to greetings as he threaded his way to his desk. He rolled a sheet of paper into his typewriter, lighted a cigarette, and rubbed his face. Then he straightened with a jerk and began hitting the typewriter keys with the first and second fingers of each hand. Managing Editor Frank Sanders hurried past with a bulging file envelope, his vest open and his stiff white hair a usual disorderly tangle. He whirled as though Bryan's presence had only then registered on him. "Terry! Where the hell have you been?" He jerked a thumb. "My office. Right away." Bryan finished a paragraph and then followed Sanders into his glass-enclosed cubicle. He slumped into a chair and waited. Sanders tried without success to light a clogged pipe. He dropped it back into the ashtray and said abruptly, "That Holzheimer story, Terry. You did a nice job clearing the kid, but your copy was pretty rough on the district attorney. Too rough, Terry." "I should have thrown a street-car at him," Bryan said. "Trying to frame a kid and build up a record." "Circumstantial evidence and re-election, Terry. It happens all the time--you ought to know. And you ought to know we're politically on the D.A.'s side of the fence. Stories like the one you wrote about the Holzheimer case will only hurt the campaign this paper is putting on." "Sometimes there's too much incompetence to whitewash--even if it comes from the right side of the fence." Sanders shook his disorderly thatch. "You ought to know better than that, Terry. You've been around long enough. This is no time to get a rush of ideals to the head." "I've never pulled my punches," Bryan returned quietly.