These soft, oozy, slimy holes were located at the lower end of the swamp, nearly a mile from the Baxter home. The upper end had long been looked upon as reclaimable through drainage, but that portion surrounding the pond was a hopeless morass. Scientific men advanced the opinion that ages ago a vast lake had existed in this region, covering miles of territory. Death Swamp was all that was left of it; the rest had dried up through the processes of nature. Tradition had it that the pond was without bottom, but science in the shape of an adventurous surveyor demonstrated that the water was not more than a few feet deep at any point. However, this same surveyor was authority for the statement that the mud at the bottom of the pond was so soft and unresisting that he could not reach solid ground with the twenty-foot fishing pole with which he was equipped. There were the usual stories, some verified, of horses and other animals straying into the swamp and sinking out of sight before the eyes of their owners—disappearing swiftly in what appeared to be a patch of firm, reed-covered earth. CHAPTER XII ONE WAY OF LOOKING AT IT Notwithstanding the almost universal belief that poor old Oliver Baxter was buried in the black mire of the Swamp—there were some who said he was still _sinking_—a state-wide search was at once instituted by his distracted son, who, for one, did not believe that the missing man had gone to his death in the loathesome tract. Before the sun had set on that bleak though sunlit day, telephone and telegraph wires carried the news to all nearby towns, villages and farms. Railway trains and interurban cars were searched; the woods and the fields for miles around were combed and the highways watched. The bank’s prompt announcement that Mr. Baxter had withdrawn thirty-five hundred dollars convinced Oliver October and a few sound-headed individuals that he had deliberately planned his departure from Rumley, although they were totally in the dark as to his reason for leaving—if, indeed, a reason existed in his disordered mind. No one could be found who saw him after he took leave of his son on the swamp road. Oliver October related all that transpired between them on that moonlit by-way. He did not spare himself in the recital. No one blamed him, however. Much to his distress, Serepta Grimes came forward with truthful descriptions of scenes in and about the Baxter home; she told of old Oliver’s inexplicable conduct, of violent fits of anger that grew out of nothing and died away in melancholy regret over the things he had said to his beloved son. And she described Oliver October as an angel possessing the patience of Job for having endured these outrageous “tantrums.”