He walked swiftly down Williams Street to his room, not once lifting his eyes from the pavement, which was dirty white from the much trampled snow. Another flunk! The third in as many weeks! Catherwood with a muttered imprecation reviewed the succession of class-room disasters. "Confound history!" he growled as he strode into his room. He flung his books upon the bed and himself into the deep Morris chair by the window. A sparrow was hopping on the porch roof without. He rattled the window violently and the sparrow flew away in fright. "Go it, you imp," he snarled; and again he condemned all history and its study to the deepest depths. It _was_ bad. The assistant professor had been lenient, but fate seemed to have composed that particular section of every history hater in the junior class. Catherwood realized this--or thought he did--as he sat staring out of the windows into the skeleton branches of the trees, and from the thought he obtained a modicum of consolation. He had worked. He had worked hard--but for some unknown reason he couldn't bite into the course, couldn't dig his teeth into the subject. He did not fear; on the contrary he was certain--as certain as a man can be--that his semester's work in class-room was of sufficiently high a grade to assure him his full credit in the course. And yet, he considered, there was the examination, five days away. In two hours he would be required to write out in a thin "blue book" all he was supposed to have learned in twenty weeks. He ruminated. How much of what he had learned had stopped in his head? He asked himself this, seriously, then smiled. He confessed to himself that he had worked merely from recitation to recitation with no effort to hold the subjects in that mathematical brain of his that caused his forehead to bulge. And the examination only five days away! As he reviewed the situation Catherwood's brow darkened and he scowled. For a space he twiddled his large thumbs and glared at a horse hitched to a grocery wagon across the street. "I wish you'd freeze," he muttered viciously to the horse; but of course the horse did not hear for the window was down. Catherwood counted his flunks on his fingers. Five; five clean, perfect flunks, altogether, he recalled. Not so bad, he considered; that is, not so _very_ bad. But there before him like a great monster with dripping jaws and green, slimy body, was the examination; and it was creeping, creeping upon him with the passage of the minutes. He stood up and shook himself nervously. From the window he saw the assistant professor approaching his home next door. He carried several bulky volumes in his arms, hugged to his breast lovingly. Catherwood watched him sourly. There was the man, he mused, in whose hands--now covered with gray-striped woolen mittens--lay his fate! Pretty serious business--one's fate lying in hands covered with gray-striped woolen mittens.