The doors were closed, and they
waited for half an hour.

At the end of that time they were re-admitted, and Paul was solemnly
escorted to the old man with the skull-cap.

'I have a question to ask you, Mr. Armstrong,' the old gentleman began.
'Were you properly indentured to this business.'

'No,' said Paul. 'I picked up what I know about it in my father's
office.'

'You were never bound apprentice?'

'No.'

'Thank you, Mr. Armstrong, that will do.'

Paul went back to his case, and fell to work there, not caring to
speculate much as to what had happened. The Father of the Chapel,
accompanied by two or three of his companions, left the composing-room,
were absent for some twenty minutes, and then filed solemnly back again.
Shortly afterwards a clerk came in, with a pen behind his ear. He stood
by Paul's side, and pronounced his name in a tone of question.

'Here,' said Paul, looking round at him.

'Just give your hands a bit of a rinse,' said the clerk, 'and put on
your things and come down into the manager's office, will you?'

Paul nodded, and went off to the sink and the jack-towel, wondering a
little. When in due time he presented himself before the manager he was
at once enlightened.

'That is your week's money, Armstrong, and your services will not be
required here further.'

'Why not?' Paul asked.

'No fault of yours,' the manager answered; 'but we find that you have
not been regularly apprenticed to the trade. This is a Union house, and
we are under Union rules.' Paul took up the half-sovereign and the small
mound of silver the manager pushed towards him, and dropped it into
his pocket coin by coin. 'I don't know your circumstances,' the manager
continued, 'but if you're in want of work, I can put you in the way of
it at once. There's a non-Union house close by, where I happen to know
they're short of hands. I have written the address in case you care to
try there. You needn't make it known to any of our men that I sent you
there. Good-morning.'

'I'm not going home,' said Paul to himself, as he walked into the street
'I'm not going home, whatever happens.'

He consulted the address he held in his hand, and walked towards it.
His dinnerless wanderings of last week had taught him something of the
intricacies of the City, if not much, and he chanced to know his way.
The place he sought was high up at the top of a ramshackle old house in
a narrow court, and a score of dispirited-looking men and