‘Beaten!’ escaped from Buckland’s lips.

Mrs. Warricombe glanced at her son with smiling sympathy; Sidwell, whose cheek had paled as her nerves quivered under the stress of expectancy, murmured a syllable of disappointment; Mr. Warricombe set his brows and did not venture to look aside.  A moment, and all eyes were directed upon the successful student, who rose from a seat half-way down the hall and descended the middle passage towards the row of Professors.  He was a young man of spare figure and unhealthy complexion, his age not easily conjectured.  Embarrassment no doubt accounted for much of the awkwardness of his demeanour; but, under any circumstances, he must have appeared ungainly, for his long arms and legs had outgrown their garments, which were no fashionable specimens of tailoring.  The nervous gravity of his countenance had a peculiar sternness; one might have imagined that he was fortifying his self-control with scorn of the elegantly clad people through whom he passed.  Amid plaudits, he received from the hands of the Principal a couple of solid volumes, probably some standard work of philosophy, and, thus burdened, returned with hurried step to his place.

‘No one expected that,’ remarked Buckland to his father.  ’He must have crammed furiously for the exam.  It’s outside his work for the First B.A.’

‘What a shame!’ Sidwell whispered to her mother; and the reply was a look which eloquently expressed Mrs. Warricombe’s lack of sympathy with the victor.

But a second prize had been awarded.  As soon as silence was restored, the Principal’s gracious voice delivered a summons to ‘Buckland Martin Warricombe.’  A burst of acclamation, coming especially from that part of the amphitheatre where Whitelaw’s nurslings had gathered in greatest numbers, seemed to declare the second prizeman distinctly more popular than the first.  Preferences of this kind are always to be remarked on such occasions.

‘Second prize be hanged!’ growled the young man, as, with a flush of shame on his ruddy countenance, he set forth to receive the honour, leaving Mr. Warricombe convulsed with silent laughter.

‘He would far rather have had nothing at all,’ murmured Sidwell, who shared her brother’s pique and humiliation.

‘Oh, it’ll do him good,’ was her father’s reply.  ’Buckland has got into a way of swaggering.’

Undeniable was the swagger with which the good-looking, breezy lad went and returned.

‘What is the book?’ inquired Mr. Warricombe.

’I don’t know.—­Oh, Mill’s Logic.  Idiotic choice!  They might have known I had it already.’

‘They clap him far more than they did Mr. Peak,’ Sidwell whispered to her mother, with satisfaction.

Buckland kept silence for a few minutes, then muttered: 

’There’s nothing I care about now till Chemistry and Geology.  Here comes old Wotherspoon.  Now we shall know who is strongest in second aorists.  I shouldn’t wonder if Peak takes both Senior Greek and Latin.  I heartily hope he’ll beat that ass Chilvers.’