In one instant, before he had time to think, a fit of blind, passionate, uncontrollable fury had clouded and overpowered Julian's whole mind. Almost unconscious of what he was doing, he kicked the door with all his might, and beat on it savagely with his clenched fists until his knuckles streamed with blood; he forgot everything but the one burning determination to get out at all hazards, and to wreak on Brogten, whom he felt to be the author of his calamity, some desperate and terrible revenge. But the thick oak door, screwed evidently with much care; and in many places, resisted all his efforts, and no one came to help him from outside. The gyp, who was usually about, happened to have gone on an errand; the stair-case was one of the most secluded in the college; the Fellow who was Julian's nearest neighbour had "gone down" for a few days, and it was improbable that any one ever heard him except Brogten, to whom, he thought, every sound of his angry violence would be perfect music. All was useless, and Julian, as he strode up and down the room, clenched his hands, and bit his lips in passionate excitement. Suddenly it struck him that he would escape by the window; but looking out for the purpose, he found that, when he had jumped on the sloping roof below him, he was still thirty feet above the ground, which, in that place, was not the turf of the bowling-green, but a hard gravel road. Giving up the attempt in despair he sat down, and covered his face with his hands; but instantly the picture of the senate-house, with the sixty candidates who were trying for the scholarship, all writing at some new paper--while he was thus cut off, (as he thought), from the long-desired accomplishment of all his hopes--rose before his eyes, and springing up once more he seized the poker, and raising it over his shoulder like a hammer, brought down the heavy iron knob with a crash on the oaken panels. He struck again and again, but, by a shower of fierce blows, could only succeed in covering the door with deep round dents. Finally he seized the heaviest chair in the room, and dashed it savagely with one heavy drive against the unyielding oak; a second blow shivered the chair to splinters, and Julian, a compulsory prisoner at that excited moment, flung himself on the sofa, furious and weary, with something that sounded like a fierce imprecation. Full twenty minutes had been occupied by his futile and frantic efforts, and for a few moments longer he sat still in a stupor of grief and rage. Meanwhile, several of the other competitors for the Clerkland had noticed his absence in the senate-house, and Owen and Kennedy kept directing anxious glances to the door, and dreading that he was ill. At last half an hour had elapsed, and Kennedy, unable any longer to endure the suspense, went up to the examiner and said-- "One of the candidates is absent, sir. Would you allow me to go and inquire the reason?" "Who is it?" asked the examiner. "Home, sir."