and both papers, in the excitation of rivalry, had partially lost the sense of what was due to the dignity of great organs.  By chance a tremendous local football match—­Knype v:  Bursley—­fell on the very Saturday of the procession.  The rival arrangements for the reporting of the match were as tremendous as the match itself, and somehow the match seemed to add keenness to the journalistic struggle, especially as the Daily favoured Bursley and the Signal was therefore forced to favour Knype.

By all the laws of hazard there ought to have been a hitch on that historic Saturday.  Telephone or telegraph ought to have broken down, or rain ought to have made play impossible, but no hitch occurred.  And at five-thirty o’clock of a glorious afternoon in earliest November the Daily went to press with a truly brilliant account of the manner in which Bursley (for the first and last time in its history) had defeated Knype by one goal to none.  Mr Myson was proud.  Mr Myson defied the Signal to beat his descriptive report.  As for the Signal’s procession—­well, Mr Myson and the chief sub-editor of the Daily glanced at each other and smiled.

And a few minutes later the Daily boys were rushing out of the publishing room with bundles of papers—­assuredly in advance of the Signal.

It was at this juncture that the unexpected began to occur to the Daily boys.  The publishing door of the Daily opened into Stanway Rents, a narrow alley in a maze of mean streets behind Crown Square.  In Stanway Rents was a small warehouse in which, according to rumours of the afternoon, a free soup kitchen was to be opened.  And just before the football edition of the Daily came off the Marinoni, it emphatically was opened, and there issued from its inviting gate an odour—­not, to be sure, of soup, but of toasted cheese and hot jam—­such an odour as had never before tempted the nostrils of a Daily boy; a unique and omnipotent odour.  Several boys (who, I may state frankly, were traitors to the Daily cause, spies and mischief-makers from elsewhere) raced unhesitatingly in, crying that toasted cheese sandwiches and jam tarts were to be distributed like lightning to all authentic newspaper lads.

The entire gang followed—­scores, over a hundred—­inwardly expecting to emerge instantly with teeth fully employed, followed like sheep into a fold.

And the gate was shut.

Toasted cheese and hot jammy pastry were faithfully served to the ragged host—­but with no breathless haste.  And when, loaded, the boys struggled to depart, they were instructed by the kind philanthropist who had fed them to depart by another exit, and they discovered themselves In an enclosed yard, of which the double doors were apparently unyielding.  And the warehouse door was shut also.  And as the cheese and jam disappeared, shouts of fury arose on the air.  The yard was so close to the offices of the Daily that the chimneypots of those offices could actually be seen.  And yet the shouting brought no answer from the lords of the Daily, congratulating themselves up there on their fine account of the football match, and on their celerity in going to press and on the loyalty of their brigade.