nflicting, no two of the positive
eye-witnesses being able to agree. So there was much shouting along
shore, and many directions given, but all the searching for a long time
proved vain. All the shouting people hushed their shouting, and spoke in
whispers whenever Albert came near. To most men there is nothing more
reverend than grief. At half-past two o'clock, the man who held the rope
felt a strange thrill, a sense of having touched one of the bodies. He
drew up his drag, and one of the hooks held a piece of a black silk cape.
When three or four more essays had been made, the body itself was brought
to the surface, and the boat turned toward the shore. There was no more
shouting of directions now, not a single loud word was spoken, the
oarsman rowed with a steady funereal rhythm, while Ben Towle, who had
held the drag-rope, now held half out of water the recovered corpse.
Albert leaned forward anxiously to see the face of Katy, but it was Jane
Downing, the girl who was drowned first. Her father took the body in his
arms, drew it out on shore, and wept over it in a quiet fashion for a
while. Then strong and friendly neighbors lifted it, and bore it before
him to his house, while the man followed in a dumb grief.

Then the dragging for Katy was resumed; but as there was much more doubt
in regard to the place where she went down than there was about the place
of the accident, the search was more difficult and protracted. George
Gray never left Albert for a moment. George wanted to take the drag-rope
himself, but a feeling that he was eccentric, if not insane, kept those
in charge of the boat from giving it to him.

When Sunday morning came, Katy's body had not yet been found, and the
whole village flocked to the lake shore. These were the first deaths in
Metropolisville, and the catastrophe was so sudden and tragic that it
stirred the entire village in an extraordinary manner. All through that
cloudy Sunday forenoon, in a weary waiting, Charlton sat on the bank of
Diamond Lake.

"Mr. Charlton," said Gray, "git me into that air boat and I'll git done
with this. I've watched them fellers go round the place tell I can't
stan' it no longer."

The next time the boat faced toward the place where Charlton stood he
beckoned to them, and the boat came to the shore.

"Let Mr. Gray row a few times, won't you?" whispered Albert. "I think he
knows the place."

With that deference always paid to a man in grief, the man who had t