ly. Thad Stevens followed with a chuckle,
after his peculiar fashion.

"You give me a pain, Julius, you certainly do," ventured K.K.

"To think," added Thad, assuming a lofty air of superior knowledge,
"of a fellow attending Scranton High believing the ridiculous yarns
these uneducated tillers of the soil and their hired help pass around,
about there being some sort of a genuine _ghost_ haunting the old
quarry---why, it's positively silly of you, Julius, and I don't mind
telling you so to your face."

"Oh, hold on there, fellows!" expostulated the other boy; "I didn't
say that I really and truly believed any of those awful stories, did I?
But so many different persons have told me the same thing that, somehow,
I came to think there _might_ be some fire where there was so much
smoke. Of course, it can't be a ghost, but, nevertheless, there are
queer goings-on about that deserted quarry these nights---three
different people, and one of them a steady-going woman in the
bargain, assured me they had glimpsed moving lights there, a sort of
flare that did all sorts of zigzag stunts, like it was cutting signals
in the air."

"Hugh, do you think that could be what they call wild-fire, or some
folks give it the name of will-o'-the-wisp, others say jack-o'-lantern?"
demanded Horatio Juggins, who had been listening intently while all
this talk was going on.

"I'd hardly like to say," replied Hugh thoughtfully. "As a general
thing that odd, moving light is seen in low, damp places. Often it
is noticed in graveyards in the country, and is believed to be induced
by a condition of the atmosphere, causing something like
phosphorescence. You know what a firefly or lightning bug is like,
don't you, Horatio? Yes, and a glow-worm also? Well, they say that
there are black-looking pools of stagnant water lying around the old
quarry; and yes, I think the lights seen might come from just such
conditions."

"That sounds all very well, Hugh," continued Julius, "but what about
the terrifying cry that sometimes wells up from that same place?"

"A cry, Julius, do you say?" exclaimed Horatio, his eyes growing round
now with increasing wonder and thrilling interest, "do you really and
truly mean that, or are you only joshing?"

"Well," the narrator went on to say soberly, "two fellows told me
they'd heard that same shriek. One was hunting a stray heifer when
he found himself near the quarry, and then got a shock that sent him
on the