as getting exhausted, and
Reginald was making up his mind to shake the dust of the place from his
feet, a boy appeared and offered to escort them to the composing-room.

They followed him up several flights of a rickety staircase, and down
some labyrinthine passages to a large room where some forty or fifty men
were busy setting up type. At the far end of this room, at a small
table, crowded with "proofs," sat a red-faced individual whom the boy
pointed out as "Duffy."

"Well, now, what do _you_ want?" asked he, as the brothers approached.

"The manager said we were to ask for Mr Durfy," said Reginald.

"I wish to goodness he'd keep you down there; he knows I'm crowded out
with boys. He always serves me that way, and I'll tell him so one of
these days."

This last speech, though apparently addressed to the boys, was really a
soliloquy on Mr Durfy's part; but for all that it failed to enchant his
audience. They had not, in their most sanguine moments, expected much,
but this was even rather less than they had counted on.

Mr Durfy mused for some time, then, turning to Reginald, he said,--

"Do you know your letters?"

Here was a question to put to the captain of the fifth at Wilderham!

"I believe I do," said Reginald, with a touch of scorn in his voice
which was quite lost on the practical Mr Durfy.

"What do you mean by believe? Do you, or do you not?"

"Of course I do."

"Then why couldn't you say so at once? Take this bit of copy and set it
up at that case there. And you, young fellow, take these proofs to the
sub-editor's room, and say I've not had the last sheet of the copy of
the railway accident yet, and I'm standing for it. Cut away."

Horace went off.

"After all," thought he to himself, "what's the use of being particular?
I suppose I'm what they call a `printer's devil'; nothing like starting
modestly! Here goes for my lords the sub-editors, and the last page of
the railway accident."

And he spent a festive ten-minutes hunting out the sub-editor's domains,
and possessing himself of the missing copy.

With Reginald, however, it fared otherwise. A fellow may be head of the
fifth at a public school, and yet not know his letters in a printing-
office, and after five or ten-minutes' hopeless endeavour to comprehend
the geography of a typecase, he was obliged to acknowledge himself
beaten and apprise Mr Durfy of the fact.

"I'm sorry I misunderstood you," said he, putting the copy down