"Course there ain't no need of havin' 'em.

It's just because the doctor wants to do everything he can." "What for ?" "Well--you know there's the pond--an'-- " "Didn't I tell you my father didn't go near the pond ?" "Well, I don't s'pose he did," said Jake, shrewdly; "but it won't do no harm to drag it, an' then everybody will know for sure he didn't." "Can't drag it anyhow," said Jerome, and there was an odd accent of triumph in his voice.

"The Dead Hole 'ain't got any 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.