He paused a moment, and then, raising his eyes and hands to heaven, prayed that "God would do for him that which was best for his highest welfare;" but even as he prayed, he secretly determined that obtaining the Clerkland scholarship was, and must necessarily be, the best piece of worldly prosperity that could possibly happen to him. CHAPTER ELEVEN. SCREWED IN. Reader, if the latter part of the preceding chapter has been dull to you, it is because you have never entered into the devouring ambition which, in a matter of this kind, actuates a young man's heart when he is aiming at his first grand distinction--an ambition which, if selfishly encouraged, becomes dangerous both to health and peace, and works powerfully, perhaps by a merciful provision, to the defeat of its own darling hope. As long as Julian had been at home, a thousand objects helped to divert his thoughts from their one cherished desire; but when he returned to Camford, finding the Clerkland a frequent subject of discussion among the men, even in hall, and constantly meeting others who were as absorbed in the thought of the approaching examination as himself, he once more fell into the vortex, and thought comparatively of little else. As yet he had had no means of measuring himself with others, except so far as the lecture-room enabled him to judge of the abilities of some few in his own college. Under these circumstances all conjecture must have seemed to be idle; but somehow or other at Camford, by a sort of intuition, the exact place a man will ultimately take is often prophesied from the first with wonderful accuracy. Saint Werner's, being by far the largest college at Camford, supplied the majority of the candidates, and Julian, Owen, and Kennedy were all three mentioned as likely to be first; but the rival ranks of Saint Margaret's boasted their champions also, and almost every small college nursed some prodigy of its own, for which it vehemently predicted an easy and indisputable success.