guilty, and many urged him to confess it at once, and save the
school from the threatened punishment. But he listened to such
suggestions with the most passionate indignation.

"What!" he said angrily, "tell a wilful lie to blacken my own innocent
character? Never!"

The consequence was, they all begun to shun him. Eric was put into
Coventry. Very few boys in the school still clung to him, and
maintained his innocence in spite of appearances, but they were the boys
whom he had most loved and valued, and they were most vigorous in his
defence. They were Russell, Montagu, Duncan, Owen, and little Wright.

On the evening of the Saturday, Upton had sought out Eric, and said, in
a very serious tone, "This is a bad business, Williams. I cannot forget
how you have been abusing Gordon lately, and though I won't believe you
guilty, yet you ought to explain."

"What? even _you_, then, suspect me?" said Eric, bursting into proud and
angry tears. "Very well. I shan't condescend to _deny_ it. I won't
speak to you again till you have repented of mistrusting me," and he
resolutely rejected all further overtures on Upton's part.

He was alone in his misery. Some one, he perceived, had plotted to
destroy his character, and he saw too clearly how many causes of
suspicion told against him. But it was very bitter to think that the
whole school could so readily suppose that he would do a thing which
from his soul he abhorred. "No," he thought; "bad I may be, but I
_could_ not have done such a base and cowardly trick."

Never in his life had he been so wretched. He wandered alone to the
rocks, and watched the waves dashing against them with the rising tide.
The tumult of the weather seemed to relieve and console the tumult of
his heart. He drank in strength and defiance from the roar of the
waters, and climbed to their very edge along the rocks, where every
fresh rush of the waves enveloped him in white swirls of cold salt
spray. The look of the green, rough, hungry sea harmonised with his
feelings, and he sat down and stared into it, to find relief from the
torment of his thoughts.

At last, with a deep sigh, he turned away to go back and meet the crowd
of suspicious and unkindly companions, and brood alone over his sorrow
in the midst of them. He had not gone many steps when he caught sight
of Russell in the distance. His first impulse was to run away and
escape; but Russell determined to stop him, and when he came