if he had never seen a galley-proof before.

"It's a stick more than a column already," said he confidentially,
offering the long paper, and then gravely looking at Buchanan, with head
bent forward, not through his spectacles but over them.

The editor negligently accepted the proof, and I read a series of
titles: "Knype _v_. Manchester Rovers. Record Gate. Fifteen thousand
spectators. Two goals in twelve minutes. Myatt in form. Special Report."

Buchanan gave the slip back without a word.

"There you are!" said he to me, as another compositor near us attached a
piece of tissue paper to his machine. It was the very paper that I had
seen come out of the sky, but its contents had been enlarged and amended
by the sub-editorial pen. The man began tapping, tapping, and the
letters began to flash downwards on their way to tell a quarter of a
million people that Axe _v_. Macclesfield had been stopped by fog.

"I suppose that Knype match is over by now?" I said.

"Oh no!" said Buchanan. "The second half has scarcely begun."

"Like to go?" Stirling asked.

"Well," I said, feeling adventurous, "it's a notion, isn't it?"

"You can run Mr Loring down there in five or six minutes," said
Buchanan. "And he's probably never seen anything like it before. You
might call here as you come home and see the paper on the machines."