Dalzell, however, shook his head and remained silent on the subject after that.

To both Dick and Dave it seemed as though the next few days simply refused to budge along on the calendar.  Certainly neither of them had ever known time to pass so slowly before.

“I hope I’ll be able to keep my nerve up until the seventeenth,” groaned Darrin.

“Surely, you will,” grinned Dick.  “You’ve got to!”

“I’ve been studying until all the words on a page seem to run together, and I don’t know one word from another,” complained Dave.

“Then drop study—–­if you dare to!”

“I’m thinking of it,” proposed Darrin seriously.  “Actually, I’ve been boning so that the whole thing gets on my nerves, and stays there like a cargo of lead.”

“Let’s pledge ourselves, then, not to study on the fifteenth or the sixteenth,” urged Dick.

“I’ll go you, right off, on that,” cried Darrin eagerly.

“And we’ll spend those two days in the open air, roaming around, and trying to enjoy ourselves,” added Prescott.

“Enjoy ourselves—–­with all the load of suspense hanging over our heads?” gasped Darrin.

“Well, we’ll try it anyway.”

To most people in and around Gridley the world, in these few days, seemed to bob along very much as usual.  Dick and Dave, however, knew better.

At last came the evening of the sixteenth!  Both anxious boys turned in early, though neither expected to sleep much.  Both, however, were soon in the land of Nod.

But Dick awoke at half-past four on the morning of the fateful seventeenth.  By five o’clock he knew that he wasn’t going to sleep any more.  So he got up and dressed.

Dave Darrin was in his bath, that same morning, before four o’clock.  Then he, too, dressed, and wondered whether every other fellow who was going into the contest to-day felt as restless.

The mothers of both boys were astir almost as early.  Mothers can’t take these examinations, but mothers know what a son’s suspense means.

Dick and Dave met at the station a full twenty minutes before train time.

CHAPTER XIX

Tom Reade Bosses the Job

“Ugh!” shivered Dave, as the chums met on the platform.  “It’s cold out here!”

“Come inside, then, and get warm.  But you’re a great athlete, to mind an ordinary December morning,” laughed Dick Prescott.

Together they stepped into the waiting room.

“What time does our train go?” asked Dave, though he had known the time of this train for the last week.

“Seven-forty,” replied Dick.

“And it’s seven-twenty, now.  Whew, what a await!”

“I could have stayed home a little longer,” nodded Dick.  “Only I told father and mother that I’d feel more like being started if I got down here this far on the way.”