A swarm of the little gauzy things, so slight and ephemeral that they seemed rather a symbolism of life than life itself, whirled before the boy’s wild, tearful eyes, and he moved aside and looked down, and then cried out and snatched something from the ground at his feet.  It was the hat Abel Edwards had worn when he left home that morning.  Jerome stood holding his father’s hat, gazing at it with a look in his face like an old man’s.  Indeed, it may have been that a sudden old age of the spirit came in that instant over the boy.  He had not before conceived of anything but an accident happening to his father; now all at once he saw plainly that if his father, Abel Edwards, had come to his death in the pond it must have been through his own choice.  “He couldn’t have fell in,” muttered Jerome, with stiff lips, looking at the gently curving shore and looking at the hat.

Suddenly he straightened himself, and an expression of desperate resolution came into his face.  He set his teeth hard; somehow, whether through inherited instincts or through impressions he had got from his mother, he had a firm conviction that suicide was a horrible disgrace to the dead man himself and to his family.

“Nobody shall ever know it,” the boy thought.  He nodded fiercely, as if to confirm it, and began picking up stones from the shore of the pond.  He filled the crown of the hat with them, got a string out of his pocket, tied it firmly around the crown, making a strong knot; then he swung his arm back at the shoulder, brought it forward with a wide sweep, and flung the hat past the middle of the Dead Hole.

“There,” said Jerome; “guess nobody ’ll ever know now.  There ain’t no bottom to the Dead Hole.”  The boy hurried out of the woods and down the road again.  When he reached the Prescott house a man was just coming out of the yard, following the path from the south door.  When he came up to Jerome he eyed him curiously; then he grasped him by the shoulder.

“Sick?” said he.

“No,” said Jerome.

“What on airth makes you look so?”

“Father’s lost.”

“Lost—­where’s he lost?  What d’ye mean?”

“Went to get a load of wood for Doctor Prescott this mornin’, an’ ’ain’t got home.”

“Now, I want to know!  Didn’t I see his team go up the road a few minutes ago?”

Jerome nodded.  “Met it, an’ he wa’n’t on,” said he.

“Lord!” cried the man, and stared at him.  He was a middle-aged man, with a small wiry shape and a gait like a boy’s.  His name was Jake Noyes, and he was the doctor’s hired man.  He took care of his horse, and drove for him, and some said helped him compound his prescriptions.  There was great respect in the village for Jake Noyes.  He had a kind of reflected glory from the doctor, and some of his own.

Jerome pulled his shoulder away.  “Got to be goin’,” said he.

“Stop,” said Jake Noyes.  “This has got to be looked into.  He must have got hurt.  He must be in the woods where he was workin’.”