azlet, rising, "whether the characters
I saw were written by the finger of a man's hand, or limned by spirits
on the sensorium of the brain. All I know is that--thank God--_they
were there_."

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN.

JULIAN AND KENNEDY.

"But there where I have garnered up my heart,
Where either I must live, or bear no life;
The fountain from the which my current runs
Or else dries up; to be discarded thence!
Patience, thou young and rose-lipped cherubim!
Aye there, look grim as hell!"
Othello, Act 4, scene 2.

Saint Werner's clock, with "its male and female voice," has just told
the university that it is nine o'clock.

A little crowd of Saint Wernerians is standing before the chapel door,
and even the grass of the lawn in front of it is hardly sacred to-day
from common feet. The throng composed of undergraduates, dons,
bedmakers, and gyps, is broken into knots of people, who are chatting
together according to their several kinds; but they are so quiet and
expectant that the very pigeons hardly notice them, but flutter about
and coo and peck up the scattered bread-crumbs, just as if nobody was
there. If you look attentively round the court, you will see, too, that
many of the windows are open, and you may detect faces half concealed
among the window curtains. Clearly everybody is on the look out for
something, though it is yet vacation time, and only a small section of
the men are up.

The door opens, and out sail the Seniors, more than ever conscious of
pride and power; they stream away in silk gowns, carrying on their faces
the smile of knowledge even into their isolation, where no one can see
it. For some reason or other they always meet in chapel, or, for all I
know, it may be in the ante-chapel, to elect the Saint Werner's
scholars.

And now the much talked of, much thought of, anxiously expected list,
which is to make so many happy or miserable, is to be announced. On
that little bit of paper, which the chapel-clerk holds in his hands as
he stands on the chapel steps, are the names which everybody has been
longing to conjecture. He comes out and reads. There are nine
scholarships vacant, of which five will be given to the Third-year men,
and four to Julian's year.

The five Third-year men are read first, and as each name is announced,
off darts some messenger from the crowd to carry the happy intelligence
to some expectant senior soph. The heads of listeners lean farther and