This version of 530 manuscript pages was worked and reworked by Twain for nearly a six-year period and is known as "Print Shop" or "No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger". It is the closest of the three versions to a completed work but was never entirely finished. It is, like the "Eseldorf" version, set in Austria but in the year 1490. These workings can be traced from November of 1902 to September in the year 1908. It is, without a doubt, the last workings of Twain on the story.

The first chapter was borrowed from "Eseldorf" with changes to the new setting. It was set two-hundred years before "Eseldorf," following the invention of printing. Twain wrote much of this version, six or seven chapters, in Florence upon visiting his wife who was in poor health. Young Satan, again named 44, is seen working in a print shop with the characters of Katrina, the cook, Heinrich Stein, the print master, and the young August Feldner, the narrator all in support of him despite the abuse of the other workers. Within a few hours, 44 has perfected the trade of printing just as the other laborers call a strike upon the master.

The next seventeen chapters were written in the early months of 1904. This sequence involves scenes of 44 in the print shop as he discusses the difference between the human thoughts of the Working-Self versus the Dream-Self. Twain came back to the version in 1905 but was displeased with the weakness of the plot. He burned nearly 30,000 words of the manuscript and rewrote the sequence to be livelier.

During this time, Twain wrote the dream ending to conclude this version of "The Print Shop." The six manuscript pages were written in 1904 to become, although never fulfilled, the final conclusion of this version, "The Print Shop."