8.  If a competitor fail to pass, he may, with the consent of the Commission, be allowed reexamination at any time within six months from the date of failure without filing a new application; but a competitor failing to pass, desiring to take again the same examination, must, if not allowed reexamination within six months from the date of failure, make in due form a new application therefor.

9.  No person who has passed an examination shall, while eligible on the register supplied by such examination, be reexamined, unless he shall furnish evidence satisfactory to the Commission that at the time of his examination he was, because of illness or other good cause, incapable of doing himself justice in said examination.

10.  The term of eligibility to appointment under the copyist and the clerk examinations shall be one year from the day on which the name of the eligible is entered on the register.  The term of eligibility under a supplementary or a special examination shall be determined by the Commission, but shall not be less than one year.

  DEPARTMENTAL RULE VII.

  1.  Vacancies in the classified departmental service, unless among the
  places excepted from examination, if not filled by either promotion or
  transfer, shall be filled in the following manner: 

(a) The appointing officer shall, in form and manner to be prescribed by the Commission, request the certification to him of the names of either males or females eligible to a certain place then vacant.

(b) If fitness for the place to be filled is tested by competitive examination, the Commission shall certify the names of three males or three females, these names to be those of the eligibles who, standing higher in grade than any other three eligibles of the same sex on the list of eligibles from which certification is to be made, have not been certified three times to the officer making the requisition:  Provided, That if upon any register from which certification is to be made there are the names of eligibles who have, under section 1754 of the Revised Statutes, claim of preference in civil appointments, the names of such eligibles shall be certified before the names of other eligibles higher in grade.  The Commission shall make regulations that will secure to each of such preference-claiming eligibles, in the order of his grade among other preference claimants, an opportunity to have his claim of preference considered and determined by the appointing officer.

2.  Certifications hereunder shall be made in such manner as to maintain as nearly as possible the apportionment of appointments among the several States and the Territories and the District of Columbia, as required by law.

3.  If the three names certified are those of persons eligible on the copyist or the clerk register, the appointing officer shall select