"Look your paper over carefully before you begin to write. Write only on those questions that you can answer, and write a lot on them, so that you apparently have no time for the others. Don't try to bluff on the questions that you don't know; some men can do it, but don't you try it. It rarely goes down with Jowler. Take the whole three hours, and don't go out early, even if you have written all you know. Now, good luck to you, old man; go in and win. I'll see you at lunch." The paper was very easy. Dick Stoughton had the same course, and finished his answers early. While waiting a decent time for appearance sake, before going out, he executed a characteristic stroke. Brown, the proctor, was a man who prided himself on his sharpness and yearned for opportunities to show it. He was taking a post-graduate course, and had been in the University only one year. He had a custom of walking stealthily about the room, and, in the most offensive manner, peering over men's shoulders while they wrote. On one of these hunts he sat down on the corner of Stoughton's desk and looked over the shoulder of the man in front. Machiavelli Stoughton hastily wrote out, on the back of the examination paper, the gist of half the answers. This paper he pinned on the back of the proctor's coat with the legend "Read him and pass him along." Brown then continued on his tour of inspection, to the edification of all and the salvation of many. Several other men came out early also. They gathered on the steps of University, and compared notes on the paper. The chief topic of conversation, however, was Rattleton. "I am afraid the jig is up with poor Jack Rat," said one man. "He is stuck." "Yes, I saw him biting his pencil and tearing his hair," corroborated another. "He looked gloomy as a funeral," said Dick; "besides that paper was so easy that, if he knew anything about the course, he ought to have finished by this time." "He will lose his degree surely unless he gets a squint at Brown's back," said Gray. "Can't anything more be done for him? Set your crafty brains at work, Dago Dick." "Of course, nothing can be done," said another man. "How are we going to communicate with him from out here? We might get him in an awful scrape." "Hold on, I've got it!" cried Stoughton, and dashed off across the Yard. Half an hour later a man hurriedly entered the drowsy examination room in University, and went up to the proctor with a telegram. Brown looked at the address and took it over to Rattleton. Jack was now slumped down in his seat gazing blankly at a fly in his inkstand, probably wishing to change places with the fly. The proctor handed him the telegram and stood near him. Jack opened the envelope, then started and smiled a little as he read the message. He looked up suddenly and caught the proctor trying to read the telegram. "No bad news I hope, Mr. Rattleton," said the latter, looking at him narrowly.