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At the end of the fortnight Anne took to "haunting" the post office also, in the distracted company of Jane, Ruby, and Josie, opening the Charlottetown dailies with shaking hands and cold, sinkaway feelings as bad as any experienced during the Entrance week.

Charlie and Gilbert were not above doing this too, but Moody Spurgeon stayed resolutely away.

"I haven't got the grit to go there and look at a paper in cold blood," he told Anne. "I'm just going to wait until somebody comes and tells me suddenly whether I've passed or not."

When three weeks had gone by without the pass list appearing Anne began to feel that she really couldn't stand the strain much longer.

Her appetite failed and her interest in Avonlea doings languished.

Mrs. Lynde wanted to know what else you could expect with a Tory superintendent of education at the head of affairs, and Matthew, noting Anne's paleness and indifference and the lagging steps that bore her home from the post office every afternoon, began seriously to wonder if he hadn't better vote Grit at the next election.

But one evening the news came.

Anne was sitting at her open window, for the time forgetful of the woes of examinations and the cares of the world, as she drank in the beauty of the summer dusk, sweet-scented with flower breaths from the garden below and sibilant and rustling from the stir of poplars.

The eastern sky above the firs was flushed faintly pink from the reflection of the west, and Anne was wondering dreamily if the spirit of color looked like that, when she saw Diana come flying down through the firs, over the log bridge, and up the slope, with a fluttering newspaper in her hand.

Anne sprang to her feet, knowing at once what that paper contained.

The pass list was out! Her head whirled and her heart beat until it hurt her.

She could not move a step.

It seemed an hour to her before Diana came rushing along the hall and burst into the room without even knocking, so great was her excitement.

"Anne, you've passed," she cried, "passed the VERY FIRST-you and Gilbert both-you're ties-but your name is first. Oh, I'm so proud!"

Diana flung the paper on the table and herself on Anne's bed, utterly breathless and incapable of further speech.

Anne lighted the lamp, oversetting the match safe and using up half a dozen matches before her shaking hands could accomplish the task.

Then she snatched up the paper.

Yes, she had passed-there was her name at the very top of a list of two hundred! That moment was worth living for.

"You did just splendidly, Anne," puffed Diana, recovering sufficiently to sit up and speak, for Anne, starry eyed and rapt, had not uttered a word.

"Father brought the paper home from Bright River not ten minutes ago-it came out on the afternoon train, you know, and won't be here till tomorrow by mail-and when I saw the pass list I just rushed over like a wild thing.

You've all passed, every one of you, Moody Spurgeon and all, although he's conditioned in history.

Jane and Ruby did pretty well-they're halfway up-and so did Charlie.

Josie just scraped through with three marks to spare, but you'll see she'll put on as many airs as if she'd led.

Won't Miss Stacy be delighted? Oh, Anne, what does it feel like to see your name at the head of a pass list like that? If it were me I know I'd go crazy with joy.

I am pretty near crazy as it is, but you're as calm and cool as a spring evening."

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