"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.