"Oh, if you are laboring with Jack, I won't interfere with the good work of the Rattleton Rescue Mission," said Hudson, dodging the dictionary and taking himself off to irritate some one else. Ned Burleigh was never in such a mood about his own examinations. He was one of the few men for whom those trials had no terrors. None of his friends could tell exactly when he did work for an examination; it might have been at 4 A.M. on the same morning after a supper; it might have been on the train during an inter-exam. excursion to Newport, or on a cat-boat cruise in the harbor. Yet he had never failed. He used to say that to know too much about a course made the examinations mere drudgery, but that when there was an uncertainty, then there was some sport in the struggle, some excitement as to whether you could throw the paper or the paper would throw you. That was all very well for him, who generally "ragged a B." and never got "flunked," but it was a dangerous attempt for most men to follow his example. This year, however, Ned was devoting himself to Jack Rattleton. It was a serious case with Jack, for he had any number of conditions to work off, so many, in fact, that every one was rather astonished at his attempt to retrieve his degree, and at the unwonted, desperate efforts of Lazy Jack. It was a forlorn hope, and the betting was heavily against him. Under any circumstances Ned Burleigh would have done all he could to help poor Jack pull through, but, added to his unselfish interest in his friend, were pride in his pupil and the fact that he had taken some of the long odds against him. Nor could Jack have found a better coach in the most high-priced tutor in Cambridge. With a thorough knowledge of the courses he had taken, Ned combined a knowledge of the presiding minds in those courses, and, moreover, he understood perfectly the science of passing an examination.