ntured to say,--

"I say, Cruden, I wish I could stand things like you. I don't know what
I should have done if that blackguard had treated me like that."

"What's the use?" said Reginald. "He wants to get rid of me, and I'm
not going to let him."

"I'm jolly glad of it for my sake. I wish I could pay him out for you."

"So you can."

"How?"

"Next time he wants you to go and drink, say No," said Reginald.

"Upon my word I will," said Gedge; "and I don't care how hot he makes it
for me, if you stick by me, Cruden."

"You know I'll stick by you, young 'un," said Reginald; "but that won't
do you much good, unless you stick by yourself. Suppose Durfy managed
to get rid of me after all--"

"Then I should go to--to the dogs," said Gedge, emphatically.

"You're a greater fool than I took you for, then," said Reginald. "If
you only knew," he added more gently, "what a job it is to do what's
right myself, and how often I don't do it, you'd see it's no use
expecting me to be good for you and myself both."

"What on earth am I to do, then? I'm certain I can't keep square
myself; I never could. Who's to look after me if you don't?"

Like a brave man, Reginald, shy and reserved as he was, told him.

I need not repeat what was said that morning over the type cases. It
was not a sermon, nor a catechism; only a few stammering laboured words
spoken by a boy who felt himself half a hypocrite as he said them, and
who yet, for the affection he bore his friend, had the courage to go
through with a task which cost him twenty times the effort of rescuing
the boy yesterday from his bodily peril.

Little good, you will say, such a sermon from such a perverse, bad-
humoured preacher as Reginald Cruden, could do! Very likely, reader;
but, after all, who are you or I to say so? Had any one told Reginald a
week ago what would be taking place to-day, he would have coloured up
indignantly and hoped he was not quite such a prig as all that. As it
was, when it was all over, it was with no self-satisfied smile or inward
gratulation that he returned to his work, but rather with the nervous
uncomfortable misgivings of one who says to himself,--

"After all I may have done more harm than good."

By the end of a fortnight Reginald, greatly to Mr Durfy's
dissatisfaction, was an accomplished compositor. He could set-up almost
as quickly as Gedge, and his "proofs" showed far fewer corrections.
Moreover, as he was punctual in his