“Fraser!” shouted another boy to some one I saw about a hundred yards ahead, “come here! here’s your old antagonist, Shepard?”
Fraser waited for us to join him, and then said, “How are you, Shepard? You’re looking deuced seedy. What’s the matter, and what are you doing here?”
“I’ve had a bad cough,” I replied, “and am coming up just for the fun of the examination.”
“Why, you don’t expect you’ve a chance, do you?” he continued. “Hostler told us you had given it up as the wisest plan.”
“Oh, I don’t suppose I’ve any chance,” I said; “at least, not with you fellows, but I thought I would come up to see what the examination was like.”
“And have it always said of you that you’d been spun at Woolwich. I think you’re a muff for your pains.”
On entering the Academy grounds we were shown to one of the cadets’ rooms, where we had to pass a medical examination. The marks of leeches and blisters on my chest at once attracted the doctor’s attention, and he declined to pass me, and sent me at once before a Board.
To meet this Board I had to walk down to the hospital near the barracks, which I did with a sergeant of Artillery to show me the way; and I soon found myself being tapped on the chest and examined by the doctors as if I were a piece of goods they were about to buy. As good luck would have it I did not cough, or I might never have had a chance for my examination. But after a slight consultation I was passed, and was sent back to the Academy to commence my examination.
I was shown into a fair-sized room, where I found about forty boys at work. They had already an hour’s start of me, and a short, smart-looking officer, who gave me a printed paper of questions, advised me to lose no time, as I was already behindhand.
“Now for the actual trial,” I said to myself, as I looked over the paper, which contained twelve questions in arithmetic and the earlier part of algebra. A feeling of delight came over me as I read this paper, for out of the twelve questions there were eight almost exactly similar to questions I had worked out with Mr Rouse.