CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR.
HOW GEORGE READER WENT UP FOR HIS FINAL EXAMINATION AND LEFT ME BEHIND HIM.
"Old man, you're overdoing it!" These words were uttered by Jim Halliday, one evening two years after the events related in our last chapter, to his friend George Reader, as the two sat together in Jim's rooms at Saint George's.
Time had wrought changes with both.

My master had secured the scholarship for which he had worked so hard during his first year's residence, and no longer inhabited the "Mouse-trap." His present quarters were the rooms immediately above those in which he was at this moment sitting, and it is hardly necessary to say that the two friends were constantly in one another's society.

George, though still retaining much of his shyness, had made many acquaintances at his college, but Jim was his only friend.

The two had their meals together, attended lectures together, worked together, and, though a greater contrast in all respects could hardly have been possible, were fairly inseparable.
At the present moment they were both working hard for the grand Tripos examination which was to close their college career.

Every one said George would stand high in this, and Jim (since he had taken to hard reading) was expected to pass too, though how, none of his friends cared to prophesy.
They were working hard on the evening in question, when Jim, suddenly shutting up his books and pushing back his chair, exclaimed,-- "Old man, you're overdoing it!" George looked up from his work, surprised at the interruption.