What is the main conflict in No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger by Mark Twain?

Mark Twain's posthumously published story "No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger"—a bizarre tale of supernatural and dreamlike events that take place at the dawn of the age of modern printing in Europe—is the last major work of fiction by one of the greatest American authors of the nineteenth century.

"No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger" is narrated by August Feldner, a sixteen-year-old printer's apprentice living in a remote Austrian village in the late fifteenth century. The print shop in which he works is located in a run-down old castle, which houses over a dozen people, including the print master, his family, and the various men who work in the shop, as well as a magician. August relates the magical events that occur in the castle after the arrival of a strange boy who says his name is "Number 44, New Series 864,962." Twain's central themes in this story include dreams and the imagination, as well as ideas, knowledge, and thought.