e had
a faculty for impressing features of the surrounding landscape on his
mind, so that he could recall it at pleasure, just as though he held
a photograph in his hand.

Now he was drawing near the quarry itself, the loneliest and most
gruesome stretch of the entire cut-off; with "Just" Smith still in
the lead. Hugh felt proud of his chum, and often chuckled as he
contemplated the other's supreme delight in case a fickle fortune
allowed him to come in ahead; for honors of this sort were a rare
thing in the past of the Smith boy; and certainly he had never before
been so close to reaping such a colossal prize as the winning of the
Marathon would be reckoned.

Now Hugh glimpsed the quarry on one side of him. How his thoughts
flew backward to marshal the strange events so recently happening
there, in which he and some of his comrades had had the good fortune
to participate.

Just then he heard a plain groan. It gave him a little thrill, but
not because he fancied there was anything supernatural connected with
the sound. Looking in the direction from whence the groan came he
discovered a boy sitting on the ground, and rubbing his lower
extremities vigorously.

It was "Just" Smith! Evidently something not down on the programme
had happened to the boy who led the race across the quarry road.
Hugh suspected treachery immediately. He turned aside, and sprang
towards his chum.

"Hey! what ails you, 'Just' Smith?" he called out, wasting some of
his precious breath in the bargain. "This isn't the way to win a
Marathon, don't you know? What if you have barked your shin?--forget
all about it, and get moving again!"

The Smith boy looked very sad, as he shook his face dolefully.

"Huh! wish I could, Hugh," he hastened to mumble, still rubbing his
shin, and making faces as though it hurt him considerably. "I've
tried to run, but shucks; what's the use when you can hardly limp at
the best? I'm through, Hugh, sorry to say. You keep on, and bag the
prize; next to winning it myself I'd love to know _you_ took it away
from that Whipple chap."

"But--how did the accident happen, 'Just' Smith?" continued Hugh.

"Accident nothing!" snapped the other, between his set teeth. "It
was all a set-up game to knock one of us out of the race, I tell you.
If you'd been leading at the time, why, that shower of rocks must
have met you."

"Rocks, did you say?" exclaimed Hugh, looking dark.

Just then the sound of footsteps wa