to the satisfaction of the
examiners--generally less. When at last the little bell tinkled which
was the sign for candidates to move on to other tables, the taller man
leaned over a list in front of him and marked down upon it the following
hieroglyphic:--

"S. B.--."

This Tom's sharp eye at once detected, and he departed well pleased, for
he knew that the "S. B." meant _satis bene_, and as to the minus sign
after it, it mattered little to him whether he had done rather more than
well or rather less. He had passed in zoology, and that was all which
concerned him at present.

CHAPTER IX.

A NASTY CROPPER.

But there were pitfalls ahead. As he moved to the botany table a
grey-bearded examiner waved his hand in the direction of the row of
microscopes as an intimation that the student was to look through them
and pronounce upon what he saw. Tom seemed to compress his whole soul
into his one eye as he glared hopelessly through the tube at what
appeared to him to resemble nothing so much as a sheet of ice with the
marks of skates upon it.

"Come along, come along!" the examiner growled impatiently. Courtesy is
conspicuous by its absence in most of the Edinburgh examinations.
"You must pass on to the next one, unless you can offer an opinion."

This venerable teacher of botany, though naturally a kind-hearted man,
was well known as one of the most malignant species of examiners, one of
the school which considers such an ordeal in the light of a trial of
strength between their pupils and themselves. In his eyes the candidate
was endeavouring to pass, and his duty was to endeavour to prevent him,
a result which, in a large proportion of cases, he successfully
accomplished.

"Hurry on, hurry on!" he reiterated fussily.

"It's a section of a leaf," said the student.

"It's nothing of the sort," the examiner shouted exultantly.
"You've made a bad mistake, sir; a very bad one, indeed. It's the
spirilloe of a water plant. Move on to the next."

Tom, in much perturbation of mind, shuffled down the line and looked
through the next brazen tube. "This is a preparation of stomata," he
said, recognizing it from a print in his book on botany.

The professor shook his head despondingly. "You are right," he said;
"pass on to the next."

The third preparation was as puzzling to the student as the first had
been, and he was steeling himself to meet the inevitable when an
unexpected circumst