"Ho! Ho!" cackled Daddy Perkiss, as he tremblingly sat down on a drift log, "the lad wants to dive in Rudy's Hole, does he? Well, let him try, let him try."
The old man was silent for a moment, and his bleary eyes had a far away expression as though they were looking into the dim past.
"It be sixty years since Jonas Rudy were drowned out here," he mumbled in a shrill voice, "an they ain't found the body to this day. I were away at the time, drivin' a teamster's wagon to Pittsburg, but I mind hearin' the story when I come home. Many a time I've heard tell how they tried to find bottom the next spring after Jonas was drowned.
"Mike Berry, the blacksmith over at Four Corners, brought his anvil, an' the men made the women folks give up their clotheslines. Then they went out on the hole in the old ferryboat, and let down the anvil. There was two hundred feet of line in all, an' when half of it were out the men lost their grip. The rest went like greased lightnin', an' the end got coiled around Mike Berry's yaller dog, an' took it along. The poor beast never came up again."
Daddy Perkiss paused for sheer want of breath, and looked around to note the effect of his story.
"That yarn was started years ago," whispered Mose Hocker, coming close up to the boys, "an' Daddy has told it so many times that he believes every word. I reckon the most of it's true though. It would take more'n one clothesline to reach bottom out here."
"But has the place never been sounded?" asked Ned. "Have you never tried it yourself?"
Mose Hocker shook his head vigorously. "What would be the use?" he replied. "Nobody doubts it. Why, Rudy's Hole is known an' dreaded for miles around."
Evidently regarding this argument as a clincher he turned aside, and began to talk to Daddy Perkiss.
About this time Randy was doing a good deal of thinking. He had listened with incredulous interest to the old man's narrative, and knowing how prone country folk are to accept any fanciful story—especially a long standing tradition—without ever attempting to verify it, the conviction had forced itself upon his mind that Rudy's Hole was a myth—in other words that its depth was nothing extraordinary.