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.