ight ago. Since then the examinations had
come and gone. The Philosophers, sobered and perspiring, had been
spread out at two-desk intervals on three fatal days in the large hall,
with day boys to right of them and Selkirkers to left, writing for their
lives, and groaning over questions which only a fiend could have
devised, and only a double-first could have answered. How I had got on,
I could no more tell than the man in the moon. My comrades, when we
compared notes afterwards, cheerfully assured me that, out of some fifty
questions on the three days, I had possibly got half a question right,
but that that was doubtful, and depended on the particular crib the
examiner swore by. Redwood, to whom I confided some of my answers,
thought rather more hopefully of my case, and told me to keep my spirits
up. Tempest said that if he were to cuff me for every discreditable
blunder I had made, I should have ear-ache for a month. Dicky, on the
other hand, confessed that he wished he could believe he had done as
well as I.

As for the other Philosophers, general discouragement was the order of
the day. It was moved and seconded that Coxhead be kicked for having
made "amnis" feminine, and having translated the French "impasse" as
"instep." And Trimble was temporarily suspended from the service of the
Conversation Club because he had put a decimal dot in the wrong place.
Public feeling ran so high that any departure from the rules of syntax
or algebra was regarded as treason against the house, and dealt with
accordingly.

On the whole, therefore, we were glad when the time of suspense came to
an end.

How matters had gone with the seniors it was even more difficult to
surmise than it had been in our case. The day after the end of their
exams., Redwood and Tempest, with Pridgin to cox, rowed twelve miles
down stream and back, and returned cheerful and serene, and even
jocular. Leslie of Selkirk's also spent a pleasant afternoon in the
school laboratory, whistling to himself as he mixed up his acids.
Crofter and Wales mooned about under the trees in the field somewhat
limply, but showed no outward signs of distress. Altogether,
speculation was baffled, and it was almost irritating to find the chief
actors in the drama refusing to take the momentous question seriously.

"How did you get on?" I asked Tempest.

"You'll hear to-morrow," said he; "so shall I."

"Do you think you'll beat Leslie?"

"Either that, or he'l