Allan was almost the last of Pete’s friends to give up hope; but when, by the next morning, Pete had neither returned nor had news of him been received, even Allan accepted the general belief. The janitor at the boat-house readily identified the overturned boat, while as for the hat, which had washed ashore at the foot of Main Street, even if Allan and Hal had been in doubt about it, there was still Pete’s initials marked on the inside. Inquiry at Hillcrest had elicited the information that Pete had never reached there.
The Guilds were deeply concerned, and Mr. Guild not only added a sum to that offered by the college for the recovery of the body, but himself took charge of a boat which all the next day dragged the river between his place and Centerport. The drowned body, however, was never recovered—a fact which surprised nobody, since the current is capricious, and the stream so broad as to preclude the possibility of searching every foot of its bed.
The accepted theory was that Pete had encountered a sudden squall while crossing the river which had either swamped the boat or overturned it. Although Pete was known to have been a capable swimmer and a fellow of more than ordinary strength, yet the fact that he had failed to win the shore from midstream, weighted down as he had been with heavy clothing, was not considered strange.
A telegram was at once despatched to Pete’s father in Colorado, and, since that did not elicit a reply by the following forenoon, a second message was sent. The death was announced in the city papers with much detail, and Pete’s athletic prowess was highly exaggerated. The Erskine Purple, which appeared the second day after the accident, contained a half-column notice of the sad affair, in which Pete’s many estimable qualities were feelingly set forth. Tommy wrote the notice himself, and, as he felt every word he wrote, the article was a very touching tribute.
The club table was a subdued and sorrowful place for several days. Pete’s chair stood pathetically empty until, in desperation, Allan put it away. But as a head to the table was essential, an informal election was taken two days after Pete’s disappearance, and Wolcott was elevated to the place of honor. A meeting of the freshman class was called and a committee was appointed to draw up resolutions of sorrow, to be sent to Pete’s father and to be published in the Purple.
When, after the second day of search, the tug-boat commissioned by the college to drag for the body abandoned its work, the first depression had passed and the college by degrees returned to its usual spirits. But Allan and Hal and Tommy were not so speedily resigned. Tommy, in especial, took the event hard.
Perhaps it had been the utter dissimilarity of Pete’s nature and his own which had drawn him to Pete. That as may be, Tommy was a very grave-faced little chap in those days.
But Allan, if he showed less grief, was sadly depressed. He had not realized before how much he had grown to care in six weeks for the big, good-hearted Westerner. He felt terribly lonely, and besides he blamed himself for not having accompanied Pete; perhaps, he thought dolefully, had he gone along, the accident wouldn’t have happened, and Pete would have been sitting there now across the table, puffing lazily at his evil-smelling corn-cob pipe. But instead of Pete there was only Tommy and Hal—and Two Spot.
Two Spot, grown greatly in bulk since her advent, was snuggled against Tommy’s arm. Outside it was blowing a gale and lashing the rain against the long windows. It was a most depressing afternoon, and the spirits of the three friends were at a low ebb. Tommy looked now and then as though a good cry would do him worlds of good. Hal scowled morosely and drummed irritatingly on the arm of the Morris chair until Allan, in desperation, begged him to “cut it out.” It was at this juncture that Tommy let fall a remark that set Allan thinking hard.