"Now as it is this miserable little boy who is to be the hero of this story, he merits, I think, some description. Though only just nine years old he looked considerably more, for he was tall for his age, and strongly built. He was very fair with a delicate pink and white complexion, which many a lady might have envied, whilst his eyes sometimes appeared to be grey and sometimes blue. His features, if not very handsome or regular, were good enough and never failed to give the impression of an open and honest nature. Altogether he would have been considered by most people a typical specimen of an English boy of Anglo-Saxon blood. Yet, as a matter of fact, as in the case of so many Englishmen, there was but little of the Saxon element in his composition, for whilst his father came from the Isle of Jersey, and was therefore of pure Norman descent, his forebears on his mother's side were some of them Scotch and others from a district in the north of England in which the Scandinavian element is supposed to preponderate over the Saxon. But though our hero bore a Norman-French name the idea that he was not a pure-blooded Englishman had never occurred to him, for he knew that his Jersey ancestors had been loyal subjects of the English crown ever since, as a result of the battle of Hastings, Duke William of Normandy became King of England. "It was not long before the new boy's melancholy meditations were rudely broken in upon by a handsome lad of about his own size, though he was his senior by more than a year. 'Hullo,' said young Jim Kennedy, looking roguishly into the sad, almost tearful, eyes of the young Jerseyman, 'who gave you that collar? Why, you look like Queen Elizabeth.' "A fond mother had indeed bedecked her darling boy with a beautiful collar of lace work several inches in breadth which spread over his shoulders, but which he soon found it advisable to discard as it made him the butt of every wit in the school. But though the collar was suppressed, the name of Queen Elizabeth, that august lady to whom Kennedy when first addressing him had declared that his mother's fond gift had given him a resemblance, stuck to him for many a long day. "The laughing, jeering interrogatory, acted like a tonic on the new boy, who though of a gentle, kindly disposition, possessed a very hot temper. His soft grey eyes instantly grew dark with anger as looking his questioner squarely in the face he answered slowly, 'What is that to you, who gave me my collar?' "'Hullo!' again said Jim Kennedy, 'you're a cocky new boy. What's your name?'