"What have you got?" whispered Ikonin at this point.

I showed him.

"Oh, I know that," he said.

"Will you make an exchange, then?"

"No. Besides, it would be all the same for me if I did," he contrived to whisper just as the professor called us up to the blackboard. "I don't feel up to anything to-day."

"Then everything is lost!" I thought to myself. Instead of the brilliant result which I had anticipated I should be for ever covered with shame—more so even than Ikonin! Suddenly, under the very eyes of the professor, Ikonin turned to me, snatched my ticket out of my hands, and handed me his own. I looked at his ticket. It was Newton's Binomial!

The professor was a youngish man, with a pleasant, clever expression of face—an effect chiefly due to the prominence of the lower part of his forehead.

"What? Are you exchanging tickets, gentlemen?" he said.

"No. He only gave me his to look at, professor," answered Ikonin—and, sure enough, the word "professor" was the last word that he uttered there. Once again, he stepped backwards towards me from the table, once again he looked at each of the professors in turn and then at myself, once again he smiled faintly, and once again he shrugged his shoulders as much as to say, "It is no use, my good sirs." Then he returned to the desks. Subsequently, I learnt that this was the third year he had vainly attempted to matriculate.

I answered my question well, for I had just read it up; and the professor, kindly informing me that I had done even better than was required, placed me fifth.

XII. MY EXAMINATION IN LATIN

All went well until my examination in Latin. So far, a gymnasium student stood first on the list, Semenoff