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
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 angry loam.
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 up, said,
"Dear Eric, I have sought you out on purpose to tell you that _I_ don't
suspect you, and have never done so for a moment. I know you too well,
my boy, and be sure that _I_ will always stick to you, even if the whole
school cut you."

"Oh, Edwin, I am _so_ wretched. I needn't tell you that I am quite
innocent of this. What have I done to be so suspected? Why, even your
cousin Upton won't believe me."

"But he does, Eric," said Russell; "he told me so just now, and several
others said the same thing."

A transient gleam passed over Eric's face.

"O, I do so long for home again," he said. "Except you, I have no
friend."

"Don't say so, Eric. This cloud will soon blow over. Depend upon it, as