never mind, Julian, Lord De Vayne told me you were sure of that."

"Did he?" said Julian, a little anxiously; "then for goodness' sake,
don't believe him. It's very kind of him to say so--but he's quite
mistaken."

"Ah, you always say so beforehand, you know. You used to say that about
the Harton scholarship, Julian, and yet you see? Do come."

"Well, I'll come," said Julian, smiling a little sadly. "But, Cyril,
don't, pray, say anything of that kind to mother or to Violet, for if I
should fail it would make me doubly sad."

Cyril, thanking Julian, and still laughingly prophesying success, ran
out to tell Frank; and, when he had gone, Julian stamped his foot
passionately on the ground, and said half-aloud, "I _will_ get this
Clerkland, I _will_ get it, I _must_ get it."

He paused a moment, and then, raising his eyes and hands to heaven,
prayed that "God would do for him that which was best for his highest
welfare;" but even as he prayed, he secretly determined that obtaining
the Clerkland scholarship was, and must necessarily be, the best piece
of worldly prosperity that could possibly happen to him.

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

SCREWED IN.

Reader, if the latter part of the preceding chapter has been dull to
you, it is because you have never entered into the devouring ambition
which, in a matter of this kind, actuates a young man's heart when he is
aiming at his first grand distinction--an ambition which, if selfishly
encouraged, becomes dangerous both to health and peace, and works
powerfully, perhaps by a merciful provision, to the defeat of its own
darling hope.

As long as Julian had been at home, a thousand objects helped to divert
his thoughts from their one cherished desire; but when he returned to
Camford, finding the Clerkland a frequent subject of discussion among
the men, even in hall, and constantly meeting others who were as
absorbed in the thought of the approaching examination as himself, he
once more fell into the vortex, and thought comparatively of little
else.

As yet he had had no means of measuring himself with others, except so
far as the lecture-room enabled him to judge of the abilities of some
few in his own college. Under these circumstances all conjecture must
have seemed to be idle; but somehow or other at Camford, by a sort of
intuition, the exact place a man will ultimately take is often
prophesied from the first with wonderful accuracy. Saint Werner's,
being by far the large