He could not but feel that these scattered attempts were of a somewhat desultory and speculative character, and that the drowning Davidina, could she have known of them, would not have been satisfied. But Davidina’s standard was always an exacting one, and as he had failed to live up to it in the past, so he must needs fail now. Nevertheless these repeated immersions in water that was so astonishingly cold did at least give his conscience the absolution it required. He could say at the inquest, and afterwards, that he had done his best; what a poor best that happened to be was nobody’s concern but his own. And so, here and there, up and down, he probed for the dear departed; and only when quite convinced that his universe was empty of Davidina did he quit the scene of the disaster and run off to fetch help. Poles, ropes, lanterns, and presently a drag-net gave to subsequent efforts a surface appearance of efficiency which his own had lacked; but below the surface, where lay all that mattered, they were attended with no more success. No body was found. Going home to his bereaved family the gasping youth told a tale which was readily believed. His exhaustion, his lively distress, his drenched condition, and his chattering teeth gave evidence of the ordeal he had passed through, and verification to a story which nobody had any reason to doubt. He told how Davidina had lost her footing and tumbled in, and he, plunging after, had twice caught hold of her clothing; and how one garment had come off in his hand, and another had given way. Only when she sank from view, after diving for her repeatedly in vain, did he relinquish his saving efforts. This was the story in its second telling; others down by the stream, in the intervals of their search work, had heard it all before; and there was so little to alter from the facts, so little to leave out, that at second hearing he had already become convinced of its truth; and only the sight of Davidina standing at the door, carrying the parcels he had forgotten, reminded him, with ‘that sinking feeling’ out of which patent medicines make their fortune, that another version of the story existed and would probably be told.