One sat and reckoned up how much he knew, and although a few hours before he had found he knew everything required, he now saw with equal certainty that he knew nothing; he could not even read. Another called to mind all his wrong-doings from the earliest time he could remember, till now when he sat there, and he though it wouldn't be strange of God if He didn't let him pass. A third sat and took signs from everything around him. If the clock, which was on the point of striking, should not sound till he counted twenty, he would pass; if the footstep he heard in the passage was that of the farm-boy Lars, he would pass; if the great raindrop that ran down the window pane should get to the bottom, he would pass. The last and final proof should be, if he could get the one foot twisted right round the other, but this he always found to be impossible. A fourth felt sure that if they would ask him only about Joseph in the Bible history, and about baptism in the Catechism, or about Saul, or the Commandments, or about Jesus, or----he sat and was still proving himself, when he was called. A fifth had a strong partiality for the Sermon on the Mount, he had dreamt about the Sermon on the Mount, he was certain to be heard in the Sermon on the Mount; he said it over to himself, and he thought to go out and read it over again, when just then he was called up to be questioned on the Prophets. The sixth thought about the pastor, who was such a good man and knew his father so well, and of the schoolmaster, who had so friendly a face, and of God, who was so really good, and had helped so many before both Jacob and Joseph, and then he thought that his mother and sisters at home would be praying for him, and that would certainly help. The seventh sat and gave up in despair all the things he had thought he would be when he grew up. Once he had thought of being a general or a pastor, and once he had even dreamt of being king, but now that time was gone by. Up to the present he had thought of going to sea, and of becoming captain, perhaps a pirate, and thereby to attain great riches; now gave up first the riches, then the pirate, then the captain, and the mate, and he stopped at the common sailor, or, at the most, the boatswain, if ever he got to sea at all, but probably he must just take a place on his father's farm.