They could not give that up for any testimony of people with ropes and grappling-hooks.

Had they not sounded it in vain with farther-reaching lines?
Not a boy in the village believed that the bottom of that famous Dead Hole had once been touched.

Jerome Edwards certainly did not.

Then, too, they had not brought his father's hat to light--or, if they had, had made no account of it.
Some of the elders, as well as the boys, believed in their hearts that the pond had not, after all, been satisfactorily examined, and that Abel Edwards might still lie there.

"Ever since I can remember anything, I've heard that pond in that place 'ain't got any bottom," one old man would say, and another add, with triumphant conclusion, "If he ain't there, where is he ?" That indeed was the question.