A week or more before the _Signal’s_ anniversary day Denry heard that the _Signal_ was secretly afraid lest the _Daily’s_ brigade might accomplish the marring of its gorgeous procession, and that the _Signal_ was ready to do anything to smash the _Daily’s_ brigade. He laughed; he said he did not mind. About that time hostilities were rather acute; blood was warming, 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 unto a fold. And the gate was shut.