There is no more hopeless and melancholy work than dragging for the body of a drowned person.

The drag moves over the bottom; the man who holds the rope, watching for the faintest sensation of resistance in the muscles of his arm, at last feels something drawing against the drag, calls to the oarsmen to stop rowing, lets the line slip through his fingers till the boat's momentum is a little spent, lest he should lose his hold, then he draws on his line gently, and while the boat drifts back, he reverently, as becomes one handling the dead, brings the drag to the surface, and finds that its hooks have brought up nothing but water-weeds, or a waterlogged bough.

And when at last, after hours of anxious work, the drag brings the lifeless body to the surface, the disappointment is bitterest of all.

For all the time you have seemed to be seeking the drowned person, and now at last you have got--what?
It was about eleven o'clock when they first began to drag.

Albert had a sort of vague looking for something, a superstitious feeling that by some sort of a miracle Katy would yet be found alive.