on, and the two or three stars that hang in the long strip of blue
overhead. They can hear the rumble of the late cab, and the tramp of the
policeman outside so plainly that these sounds are quite startling. For
all day long Fleet Street is a busy place, with thousands of people
going up and down, and hundreds of carts, cabs, waggons, cars, and
carriages, hustling in the roadway, and people who have only seen and
heard it in the day-time are surprised to find how silent and deserted
it is at midnight.

But in the narrow court, and in many other courts and passages close by,
there are other sounds and other lights than the noise of the
policeman's boots and the gleaming of the stars. Any one who is standing
there may hear a curious buzzing, and now and then a dull thump, and
looking about may see more than one big building with its windows all
aglow, and the shadows of people moving across them. Now and then a door
will open, and a lad, perhaps without a cap, and with his jacket tied
round his neck by the sleeves, will rush out as though the place were on
fire and he had been sent to fetch an engine.

If you are standing near the door you will have to get out of the way of
that lad, or he will be likely to run you down, or jam you against the
wall, for he is in a hurry. He is not going to fetch an engine, for if
you watch him he scampers down the next court, or perhaps across Fleet
Street, and in less time than you can get your breath properly, is back
with a tray piled with steaming mugs, and plates of thick
bread-and-butter; and while you are wondering how he can have got them
so quickly, and whether he will ever carry them up that steep flight of
stairs behind the door of the big building, he gives a shout that seems
to make twenty echoes, and then you lose sight of him.

In those big buildings with the dark doors and the lighted windows the
news of the week is being printed, that people may read it in the
papers. There the printers are at work, and will be at work all night;
the lad who has just gone in is a printer's lad, and because of some
part of the work he has to do he is called a "reading-boy."

Nearly every day this week numbers of letters and telegrams and written
accounts of various things that have taken place in different parts of
the world have been coming in to this building. When they come in the
editor looks at them and sends them up to the chief compositor. The
"compositors," up in the top rooms w