There was always something about Sartliff that stimulated, but at the same time excited an apprehension in Bart, who regarded him as past recall to healthy life, and he felt a sense of relief when he was alone; but the old, melancholy chords continued to vibrate, and Bart returned to the village under a depression that lingered about him for days. CHAPTER XLII. ADMITTED. At the September term of the Supreme Court, Mr. Ranney presented the certificates and applications for the admission of Case, Ransom, and Bart on the first day, and they were, as usual, referred to a Committee of the whole bar, for examination and report. The Committee met that evening in the Court room, the Supreme Judges, Wood and Lane, being present. Old Webb, of Warren, whom Case ought to have sketched in his rough outlines as the senior of the bar, turned suddenly to Bart, the youngest of the applicants, and asked him if a certain "estate could exist in Ohio?" After a moment's reflection, Bart answered that it could not. "Why?" Bart explained the nature and conditions of the estate, and said that one of them was rendered impossible by a statute; and explained how. A good deal of surprise was expressed at this; the statute was called for, and on its being placed in his hands, Bart turned to it, read the law, and showed its application. Wood said, "Judge Lane, I think this young man has decided your Hamilton Co. case for you." Some general conversation ensued, and when it subsided, old Webb said, "Well! well! young man, we may as well go home, when we get such things from a law student." And they did not ask him another question. The examination was over at last. Case had acquitted himself well, and Ransom tolerably. Bart was mortified and disgusted. This was the extent then of the ordeal; all his labor, hard study, and anxiety, ended in this! The next morning, on the assembling of the Court, the three young men were admitted, sworn in, and became attorneys and counsellors at law, and solicitors in chancery, authorized to practise in all the courts of Ohio. All this was made to appear by the clerk's certificate, under the great seal of the Supreme Court of the State, tied with a blue ribbon, and presented to each of them. It tended not much to relieve Bart, to know that the question he had so summarily disposed of had much excited and disturbed the legal world of Middle and Southern Ohio; that the best legal minds had been divided on it; and that a case had just been reserved for the court in bane, which turned on this very point. It was over; he had his diploma, but he felt that in some way it was a swindle.