Mr Quaritch came up in the evening to see him, with a pile of review-books from the Daily Runner, and his pipe, ferret-twinkle, and unhappy wee beard: Want anything to read? What’s that you’ve got? Ewan showed him the text-book and he shook his head: Dreich stuff. Would you care to review a novel?

Ewan shook his head, couldn’t be bothered with novels. Mr Quaritch said he might count himself lucky, he’d to bother enough with the lousy tripe, twenty or so of the damned things a week. Ewan asked who wrote them—and what on earth for? and Mr Quaritch said mostly wee chaps without chins—but what for God might know, He kept quiet about it, unless it was to provide the deserving reviewer with half a crown a copy when he sold them at Burnett’s.—Piddle makes a fortune flogging reviews. Have you heard what happened to my colleague last night?

Ewan said he hadn’t and Quaritch told him the tale, Mr Piddle was racing for the six-thirty train with his copy, Duncairn news for the Tory Pictman, gey late, in a hell of a sweat that he’d miss it. You knew the way the daft Bulgar would ride?—head down over the handlebars, neck out like a gander seeking the water, all in a flush and a paddy for time. Well, he wheeled out from the Runner offices in Wells Street, into Royal Mile, and pedalled like hell up the Royal, tramcars and buses and lorries about, dodging the lot and beating them all. Dark was coming down and the street-lamps were lighting and Piddle’s feet were flying like the wind when, keeking his head a bit to one side he noticed a lot of folk yelling at him. Well, he took no notice, half Duncairn yells whenever it sights our reporter Piddle, just thought that the proletariat,—he-he!—was living up to its lowness, yes? And then next minute his bike left the earth, his head went over his heels and vanished, and when he’d finished wondering with a sheer despair how he’d ever get copy about the end of the world down to the Tory Pictman office when there wouldn’t be a Pictman left to print it—he looked up round the curve of his haunches and saw two or three folk looking down at him, one cried Are you killed? Piddle wasn’t sure, but he managed to stand up, and was dragged from the hole by the crowd that had come, the rest of the survivors of the end of the world. And then he found what had happened was he’d fallen head-first into road-digging in the middle of the Mile, he’d passed the red lights with never a glance, that’s what the shouts had been for as he passed. The bike looked like a bit of string chewed by a cow, but Piddle had no time to attend to it: the next things the gapers around the hole saw were Piddle’s legs scudding away up the Mile, bent on catching the Pictman train….