all my class, but thanks to trigonometry and Latin and history, all the two next classes as well. As soon as the school reassembled I was put in the Upper Fifth. All the boys were from two to three years older than I was, and they all made cutting remarks about me to each other and avoided speaking to "Pat". All this strengthened my resolution to get to America as soon as I could.
Meanwhile I worked as I had never worked: at Latin and Greek as well as Mathematics; but chiefly at Greek, for there I was backward: by Easter I had mastered the grammar—irregular verbs and all—and was about the first in the class. My mind, too, through my religious doubts and gropings and through the reading of the thinkers had grown astonishingly: one morning I construed a piece of Latin that had puzzled the best in the class and the Doctor nodded at me approvingly. Then came the step I spoke of as decisive.
The morning prayers were hardly over one bitter morning when the Doctor rose and gave out the terms of the scholarship Exam at Midsummer; the winner to get eighty pounds a year for three years at Cambridge, and the second ten pounds with which to buy books. "All boys", he added, "who wish to go in for this scholarship will now stand up and give their names." I thought only Gordon would stand up, but when I saw Johnson get up and Fawcett and two or three others I too got up . . . . A sort of derisive growl went through the school; but Stackpole smiled at me and nodded his head as much as to say, "they'll see", and I took heart of grace and gave my name very distinctly. Somehow I felt that the step was decisive.
I liked Stackpole and this term he encouraged me to come to his rooms to talk whenever I felt in-
