The written part of the examination lasted four days; and then there was an interval¹ of one day in which the harassed² and harried³ aspirants⁴ might restore themselves for the two days' ordeal⁵ of the viva voce. George had continued to be well satisfied with his work up to the interval. He considered that he had perfectly⁶ succeeded in separating the lover and the examinee, and that nothing foreign to the examination could vitiate his activity therein. It was on the day of repose⁷, a Wednesday, that a doubt suddenly occurred to him as to the correctness of his answer, in the "Construction" paper, to a question which began with the following formidable words: "A girder, freely supported at each end and forty feet long, carries a load of six tons at a distance of six feet from one end and another load of ten tons——" Thus it went on for ten lines. He had always been impatient of detail, and he hated every kind of calculation. Nevertheless he held that calculations were relatively⁸ easy, and that he could do them as well as the driest duffer in the profession when he set his mind to them. But the doubt as to the  correctness of his answer developed into a certainty. Facing the question in private again, he obtained four different solutions in an hour; it was John Orgreave who ultimately set him right, convicting him of a most elementary misconception. Forthwith his faith in his whole "Construction" paper vanished. He grumbled⁹ that it was monstrous¹⁰ to give candidates an unbroken stretch of four hours' work at the end of a four-day effort. Yet earlier he had been boasting that he had not felt the slightest

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