ected with your grandfather's will,
and I am sorry to say they have never been friends since. Your uncle
has always been a very unpractical man; he has wasted his life
following up ideas which he thought would bring him success and riches,
but which always turned out failures. He always has some fresh fad,
and it always brings him fresh trouble. I don't think he would
wilfully wrong any one, but from being always in difficulties and under
the weather, his temper has been soured and his judgment warped, and he
cannot or will not see that your father acted in a perfectly just and
honourable manner, and the consequence is, as I said before, they never
made up their quarrel."

"And Jack is going to the school at Melchester?"

"Yes; and I want Valentine to make friends with him, and for us to have
him here in the summer. Poor boy, soon after your mother died, he lost
his, and I am afraid his life and home surroundings have not been very
happy since. Well, we must try to brighten him up a bit. I've no
doubt we shall be able to do that when we get him here at Brenlands."

CHAPTER II.

AN UGLY DUCKLING.

"They had not been out of the egg long, and were very saucy. 'Listen,
friend,' said one of them to the duckling, 'you are so ugly that we
like you very well.'"--_The Ugly Duckling_.

It was the first day of term, and Melchester School presented a general
appearance of being unpacked and put together again, as though the
whole institution had been sent out of town for the holidays, and had
returned by goods train late on the previous evening. The passages
were strewn with the contents of boxes belonging to late comers; new
boys wandered about, apparently searching for something which they
never found; while the old stagers exchanged noisy greetings, devoured
each other's "grub," and discussed the prospects of the coming thirteen
weeks which they must pass together before the commencement of the
summer vacation.

Most of the boys had arrived on the Monday evening, but Valentine
Fenleigh did not come back until the following morning. According to a
promise made to his aunt before leaving Brenlands, one of the first
things he did was to inquire after his cousin.

"Yes," said one of his classmates, "there is a new chap by the name of
Fenleigh, but I don't know what he's like. He's not put with us in the
Lower Fourth."

Among a hundred and fifty boys, and in the confusion of a first day, it
was a difficu