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