some of you will have to turn out with the lanterns, and
search alongside the road as we go slowly along."

Horatio gave a gasp that was plainly audible.

"Do you really mean, Hugh," he went on to ask, in a voice that
trembled more or less despite Horatio's effort to control the same,
"that you half expect to find K. K. lying alongside the road, either
dead, or else insensible from the pain of his broken leg?"

"Well, I wasn't just thinking things would be as bad as all that,"
Hugh hastened to say. "What I had in mind was the chance of coming
on his footprints, and then trying to follow the same. We could
easily tell them, for K. K. had on his running shoes, you remember.
By tracking him, step by step, don't you see, we could tell just
where he met with his trouble, even find out, perhaps, the nature of
his accident, and continue to follow him up."

"That would suit me first rate," said Julius, promptly; "and my fine
electric hand-torch might come into play with a vengeance. There's
nothing better going for following a trail in the dark, because the
light is focussed, you see, on a small compass. Why, you can pick up
night-walkers like everything when the fishing season's on, by using
a flashlight. I could even find a needle in a haystack, I believe,
with one of these jim-dandy contraptions."

"All right, Julius, we'll appoint you head tracker, then," chuckled
Horatio. "But, after all, perhaps we'll run across our comrade yet,
before we get out of this tangle. We're about to come to the most
critical point of the entire trip, remember, for the old quarry is
just ahead of us."

Horatio chanced to be on the side of the car toward the quarry. He
was not spending nearly so much time now looking ahead, leaving that
task to his chums; even while talking he kept his eyes fixed upon the
dark expanse that represented the surrounding woods, anticipating
catching a glimpse of something, he hardly knew what, at any moment
now. Doubtless all those silly yarns retailed by the ignorant
gossiping farm-hands in the market-place in Scranton, while they
tried to outdo one another in matching fairy stories, must have been
circulating through Horatio's brain just then. The heavy atmosphere
of the deserted stone quarry, and its lonely surroundings, added to
the mysterious disappearance of K. K., combined to make him
peculiarly susceptible to such influences as see ghosts in every
white object that moves in the darkness.

T