ny bottom."

Jake laughed. "That's a darned lie," said he. "I helped drag it
myself once, forty year ago; a girl by the name of 'Lizy Ann Gooch
used to live 'bout a mile below here on the river road, was missin'.
She wa'n't there; found her bones an' her straw bonnet in the swamp
two years afterwards, but, Lord, we dragged the Dead hole--scraped
bottom every time."

Jerome stared at him, his chin dropping.

"Of course it ain't nothin' but a form, an' we sha'n't find him there
any more than we did 'Lizy Ann," said Jake Noyes, consolingly.

Doctor Prescott came out of the house, and as he opened the door a
shrill cry of "There needn't anybody say anything else" came from
within.

"Now you'd better go in and stay with your mother," ordered Doctor
Prescott. "I have given her a composing powder. Keep her as quiet as
possible, and don't talk to her about your father."

Doctor Prescott got into his chaise and drove away up the road, and
Jerome went in to his mother. For a while she kept her rocking-chair
in constant motion; she swung back and forth or hitched fiercely
across the floor; she repeated her wild cry that her husband had
fallen down and died, and nobody need say anything different; she
prayed and repeated Scripture texts. Then she succumbed to the
Dover's powder which the doctor had given her, and fell asleep in her
chair.

Jerome and Elmira dared not awake her that she might go to bed. They
sat, each at a window, staring out into the night, watching for their
father, or some one to come with news that his body was found--they
did not know which. Now and then they heard the report of a gun, but
did not know what it meant. Sometimes Elmira wept a little, but
softly, that she might not waken her mother.

The moon was full, and it was almost as light as day outside. When a
little after midnight a team came in sight they could tell at once
that it was the doctor's chaise, and Jake Noyes was driving. The boy
and girl left the windows and stole noiselessly out of the house.
Jake drew up at the gate. "You'd better go in an' go to bed, both on
you," he said. "We'll find him safe an' sound somewheres to-morrow.
There's nigh two hundred men an' boys out with lanterns an' torches,
an' firin' guns for signals. We'll find him with nothing wuss than a
broken bone to-morrow. We've dragged the whole pond, an' he ain't
there, sure."

Chapter III

The pond undoubtedly partook somewhat of the nature of an Eastern