ged
back a mass of dripping marsh growth, caught by the fish-hooks. His
second attempt landed the stone a yard or so beyond the hat and the
treacherous character of the ground there was shown by the almost
instant submergence of the missile. It was with difficulty that Gilbert
dragged it out, and with every pull he feared the cord would snap. But
as he pulled, the hat came also. The line was directly across it and the
hooks caught it nicely. There was no vestige of any solid object where
the cap had been. Gilbert wondered how deep the log had sunk, and the
suit-case and--the other....

He shook the clinging mud and marsh growth from the hat and looked at
it. He had seen Hervey only twice; once lying unconscious in the bus,
and once that very day, when the young wanderer had started off to visit
his friend, the farmer. But this cap very vividly and very pathetically
suggested its owner. The holes in it were of every shape and size. The
buttons besought the beholder to vote for suffrage, to buy liberty
bonds, to join the Red Cross, to eat at Jim's Lunch Room, to use only
Tyler's fresh cocoanut bars, to give a thought to Ireland. There was a
Camp-fire Girls' badge, a Harding pin, a Cox pin, a Debs pin ... Hervey
had been non-partisan with a vengeance.

With this cap, the one touching memento of the winner of the Gold Cross,
Gilbert started sorrowfully back to camp. The dreadful manner of
Hervey's death agitated him and weakened his nerve as the discovery of a
body would not have done. There was no provision in the handbook for
this kind of a discovery; no face to cover gently with his scout scarf,
no arms to lay in seemly posture. One who _had been_, was _not_. His
death and burial were one. Gilbert could not fit this horrible thought
to his mind. It was out of all human experience. He could not rid
himself of the ghastly thought of how far down those--those
_things_--had gone.

Slowly he retraced his steps along the trail--thinking. He had read of
hats being found floating in lakes, indubitable evidence of drowning,
and he had known the owners of these hats to show up at the ends of the
stories. But _this_....

He thought of the alighting of that bird upon the sinking end of the
log. How free and independent that bird! How easy its escape. How
impossible the escape of any mortal. To carelessly pause upon a log that
was going down in quicksand and then to fly away. There was blitheness
in the face of danger for you!