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“What’s the trouble?” asked Lester, who was in no very good humor himself.

“Matter enough,” replied the boy. “I wish I had never seen or heard of this school.”

“Here too,” said Lester. “Are you a new scholar? Then we belong to the same class and company.”

“I wouldn’t belong to any class or company if I could help it,” snapped the boy. “My father didn’t want me to come here, but I insisted, like the dunce I was, and now I’ve got to stay.”

“So have I; but I didn’t come of my own free will. My father made me.”

“Get into any row at home?” asked the boy.

“Well—yes,” replied Lester, hesitatingly.

“I don’t see that it is anything to be ashamed of. You look like a city boy; did the cops get after you?”

“No; I had no trouble with the police, but I thought for a while that I was going to have. I live in the canebrakes of Mississippi, and my name is Lester Brigham. I used to live in the city, and I wish I had never left it.”

“My name is Enoch Williams, and I am from Maryland,” said the other. “I don’t live in a cane-brake, but I live on the sea-shore, and right in the midst of a lot of Yahoos who don’t know enough to keep them over night. Egan is one of them and Hopkins is another.”