ow the old quarry lies! And I'm not fooling, either; cross my heart
if I am!"

CHAPTER XV

PROWLING AROUND THE QUARRY

Everybody was staring hard by the time Horatio finished. Hugh, of
course, had immediately stopped the car on the road, so that they
were now stationary.

It chanced that the spot was one of few where a glimpse of the quarry
could be picked up, as the boys had discovered at the time they
passed along this way, when we overtook them on their nutting trip.

Seconds crept past.

Each boy could measure time by the beating of his wildly accelerated
heart, and as these were throbbing at the rate of something like a
hundred pulsations per minute it can be easily understood that "things
were going some," to quote Horatio, when afterwards telling the story.

Then all of them saw what the first discoverer had attempted to
describe. They stared as though fascinated. Truly Horatio had said
well when he spoke of the odd movements of the mysterious light; for
it moved swiftly up and down, then sideways, and in eccentric circles,
after which it vanished as suddenly as it had come into being.

Some of the boys sighed, as though being wakened from a dream. Horatio,
of course, was full of deepest gratification, since he had detected a
skeptical air in the actions of Thad and Owen, which seemed to place
him in the light of one who saw things where none existed."

"There, didn't I tell you?" he exclaimed, triumphantly. "And, say,
wasn't that---eh, party, whoever he might be, making some sort of
telegraphic signals with his old lantern or torch?"

"Hugh, what do you think?" demanded Thad. "You're up in all that kind
of wigwag signal work, and perhaps now you could tell what it means."

"I lost some of it, I'm sorry to say, fellows," observed Hugh, gravely;
"but all the same I caught enough to tell me that waving of a light
was meant as a signal message, though who sent it, and to whom, is all
a mystery."

"But could you make out enough of the message, Hugh, to give you any
idea what it stood for?" persisted Thad.

"Yes, I believe I did," the other admitted, solemnly, so that each
of his chums bent closer to catch the next words that fell from
his lips. "I'm certain it spelled out the word 'Help,' for one;
and I thought another was 'quick'!"

"Oh! what do you think of that?" gasped Horatio.

"The mystery deepens," added Owen, dramatically, just as he had
probably been accustomed to reading i