"Any chance of a job, sir?" said the new-comer, who might have been Septimus Hardon twenty years older, and more shabby. There was `old compositor' oozing out of him at every corner, and the corners in his person were many; he smelt of stale tobacco-smoke, and he was taking almost his last pinch of snuff out of a dirty piece of paper, with his long, lithe, active fingers as Septimus Hardon approached him. A shabby black frock-coat was buttoned tightly to his chin; his shiny black trousers had the gloss of age thick upon them; Wellington boots were upon his feet that rivalled his tall hat for dilapidations; old, sallow, dirty, and wild-looking, he was not the man a master would have employed unless from some latent idea that he suited the district. "Any chance of a job, sir?" Septimus Hardon shook his head and sighed, which was, to say the least of it, unbusiness-like. The old man echoed the sigh, leaned one hand upon the case of type at his elbow, and began to finger the letters, bringing up the bright unused types from the bottom of the boxes. He then sighed again, took in at one glance the fittings of the office, and ended by fixing his eyes upon the owner. "Might do a deal of work with all this, sir." Septimus Hardon nodded drearily, and sighed again, instead of promptly ordering the man off his premises. "Yes; should be glad of an hour's work or so, sir. Seems hard here in this world of ours that when a man's ready and willing to work he can't get it to do, sir; don't it?" Septimus nodded, and looked hard at the man, thinking how his was after all the worse lot. "I'm faint, sir," continued the old printer, "and hungry, and hard up;" and then he looked down at his clothes with a dreary smile upon his grim, unshorn face. "I would give you work with pleasure," said Septimus; "but I might as well close the office for all that comes to my share." The man scraped the last of his snuff out of the shabby piece of newspaper, and lost it all beneath his long dirty finger and thumb-nails; when, not to disappoint his itching organ, he ran a lean finger along a ledge where dust lay thick, and administered it to his nose in an absent way, snapped his fingers loudly to get rid of the residue, and then slowly turned to go; but, on reaching the door, he faced round again: "If you'd stand an advance of a shilling, sir, I'd come honestly another time and work it out; for I _am_ hard up, sir, and no mistake." Mistake there certainly was none; but shillings were then scarce things with Septimus Hardon. A shilling, the sum tossed carelessly to the cabman for a few hundred yards' ride, meant, perhaps, the dinner of himself and family; and he knew in his heart that the odds were very long against his ever seeing man or shilling again; but there was so great a knowledge of want in his heart that he could not bear to see it in others, and almost the last shilling in his pocket was slipped into the visitor's hand.