"Tempest of Sharpe's is the man for my money." Tempest laughed again; but it was a sort of laugh which did not bode well for Leslie of Selkirk's.
This talk had been a fortnight 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.