"A very creditable attempt, Green," said the master, now with a gentle voice. "De Soto?--Nothing from De Soto? Dear, dear! We'll have to try Macnooder then. What? Studied the wrong lesson? How sad! Mistakes will happen. Don't want to try that, either? No feeling of confidence to-day; no feeling of confidence." He began to call them by rows. "Dark, Davis, Denton, Dibble--nothing in the D's. Farr, Francis, Frey, Frick--nothing from the F's; nothing from the D. F's. Very strange! very strange! Little spring fever--yes? Too bad! too bad! Lesson too long? Yes? Too long to get any of it? Dear! dear! Every one studied the review, I see. Excellent moral idea, conscientious; wouldn't go on until you have mastered yesterday's lesson. Well, well, so we'll have a beautiful recitation in the review." How absurd it was to be flunking under the Roman! Next year he would show them. He would rise early in the morning and study hours before breakfast; he would master everything, absorb everything--declensions and conjugations, Greek, Roman, and mediæval civilisation; he would frolic in equations and toy with logarithms; his translation would be the wonder of the faculty. He would crush Red Dog and Crazy Opdyke; he would be valedictorian of his class. They would speak of him as a phenomenon, as a prodigy, like Pascal--was it Pascal? What a tribute the head master would pay him at commencement! There on the stage before all the people, the fathers and mothers and sisters, before the Red Dog, and Ginger Pop Rooker, and Hickey, and all the rest, sitting open-mouthed while he, Snorky Green, the crack pitcher and valedictorian of his class, a scholar such as Lawrenceville had never known-- "Green, Gay, and Hammond, go to the board. Take your books." Snorky went hastily and clumsily, waiting as a gambler waits for his chance. "Gay, decline hic, hæc, hoc; Green, write out the gerundive forms of all the verbs in the first paragraph top of page 163." Snorky gazed helplessly at the chronicles of Æneas, and then blankly at the inexorable blackboard, where so many gerundives had not been inscribed. He drew his name in lagging letters exactly midway, at the top, with a symmetrical space above. _R. B. GREEN_ Then he searched anxiously for the gerundives that lurked somewhere in the first paragraph, top of page 163. Then returning to the board he rubbed out the name with little reluctant dabs and wrote _ROGER B. GREEN_ Abandoning the chase for gerundives, he stood off a few feet and surveyed his labours on the blackboard, frowned, erased it and wrote dashingly, _ROGER BALLINGTON GREEN_ Satisfied, he drew a strong line under it, added two short crosses and a dot or two, and returned to his seat. * * * * *