He had no cause to trouble himself. All he had to do was to acquit himself as well as he could as a finale to his training; but in the highly-strung nervous state to which constant study had brought him, it seemed that his whole future depended upon his gaining one or other of the educational prizes that would be adjudged, and that unless he were successful, Sage Portlock, his old playmate and friend--now some one very far dearer--and for whose sake he had striven so hard, would turn from him with contempt. At another time the questions before him would have been comparatively easy, and almost, without exception, he could have written a sensible essay upon the theme; but now Sage, his old home at Lawford, the school, the troubles in the town and opposition to the Rector, and a dozen other things, seemed to waltz through his brain. He had several letters in his pocket, from Sage and from his father, and they seemed to unfold themselves before him, so that he read again the words that he knew by heart: how indignant the people were at the death of poor old Sammy Warmoth and the appointment of Joe Biggins; the terrible quarrel that there had been between Mr Mallow and the Curate about the burial of Tom Morrison's child, and how the quarrel had been patched up again because Mr Mallow had not liked Mr Paulby to leave just when people were talking so about the little grave in Tom Morrison's garden. There was the question of the wretched attempt at choral singing too on Sunday--singing that he was to improve as soon as he was master; for Sage said it did not matter how well she taught the girls, Humphrey Bone made his boys sing badly out of spite, so as to put them out. Then he had a good look at the examination paper, and tried to read, but Humphrey Bone's threat to expose him and show him up as an ignoramus before all the town,--a clod who ought to go back to his father's tannery,--all duly related in one of her letters by Sage Portlock, came dancing out of the page before him. Again he cleared his head and took up his pen, but he felt that he could not write. And now came up the letter which told how Cyril Mallow had come back from Queensland--handsome Cyril, whom he had severely punished some time before, just, in fact, as he was about to sail for Australia. Luke Ross did not know why he should feel uneasy about Cyril Mallow being back; it was nothing to him. He was a bit of a scamp, and so on, but he was not so bad as Frank Mallow, who had been obliged to get off to New Zealand after the scandal about a couple of the Gatton village girls, and the fight with Lord Artingale's keepers, in which he was said to have joined Jock Morris. The Lawford people said it was from this that the Rector became non-resident, as much as from having overrun the constable.