The Chums of Scranton High on the Cinder Path | Page 7

swan excuse me from ever listening to another. I can beat that all hollow through a megaphone, and then not half try."
So the chauffeur started up, and they were soon moving along the rough road that had once, no doubt, been kept in repair, when the heavy wagons carried out the building stone quarried from the hillside, but which was now in a pretty bad shape.
Two minutes afterwards and the road took them directly alongside the quarry dump, where the excavated earth had been thrown. They could now see the cliff rising up alongside. It looked strangely bleak, for, of all things, there can hardly be a more desolate sight than an abandoned stone-quarry, where the weeds and thistles have grown up, and puddles of water abound.
Of course, the boys all stared, as they slowly wound along the road in full view of the entire panorama that was being unrolled before their eyes. They noted how in places there seemed to be deep fissures along the abrupt face of the high cliff. These looked like caves, and some of them might be of considerable extent, judging from their appearance.
"If this great old place chanced to be nearer town," said K. K., managing to get a quick glimpse, although, as a rule, he needed all his attention riveted on the rough road he was trying to follow, "I reckon some of the fellows would have high times exploring those same holes in the hill."
"It's just as well then it's as far distant as happens to be the case," Hugh told him; "because the doctors in Scranton would have broken arms and legs galore to practice on. That same old quarry would make a dangerous playground."
"Oh!"
That was Julius uttering a startled exclamation. He gripped Horatio so severely by the arm that he must have pinched the other. At any rate, Horatio gave a jump, and turned white; just as though his nerves had all been stretched to a high tension, so that anything startled him.
"Hey! what did you do that for?" snapped Horatio, drawing away. "Think you're a ghost, Julius, and feel like biting, do you? Well, try somebody else's arm, if you please."
"But didn't any of the rest of you see it?" gasped the said Julius, not deigning to quarrel over such a trivial thing as a pinch.
"See what?" asked Steve, still staring hard at the quarry, which they were by now fairly well past.
"Well, I don't know exactly what it was," frankly admitted the disturber of the peace. "But it moved, and beckoned to us to come on over. You needn't laugh, Steve Mullane, I tell you I saw it plainly right over yonder where that big clump of Canada thistles is growing. Course I'm not pretending to say it was a man, or yet a wolf, but it was something, and it sure did move!"
Hugh was looking with more or less interest. He knew how things appear to an excited imagination, and that those who believe in uncanny objects seldom have any trouble about conjuring up specters to satisfy their own minds.
So all of them, save, perhaps, the driver, kept their eyes focussed on the spot mentioned by Julius until the first clump of trees shut out their view of the old stone quarry and its gruesome surroundings.
"I looked as hard as I could," said Horatio, "but never a thing did I see move. Guess you've got a return of your old malady, Julius, and you were seeing things by daylight, just as you say you used to in the dark."
"The only explanation I can give," spoke up Hugh, and, of course, every one lent a willing ear, because, as a rule, his opinions carried much weight with his chums; "is that while Julius may have seen something move, it was only a long, feathery plume of grass, nodding and bowing in the wind. I've been fooled by the same sort of object many a time. But let it pass, boys. We've turned our back on the old quarry now, and are headed for the road again, two miles above Hobson's mill-pond. I only hope we find it better going on this end of the abandoned trail. This jumping is hard on the springs of the car, and also on our bones."
"For one," said Julius, "I hope never to set eyes on the place again."
"Oh! that's silly talk, Julius," commented K. K. "Here's Hugh, who means to take a run out this way again as soon as he can, so as to time himself, and learn just what he can save by cutting across country in the big race. And I wouldn't be surprised if he put 'Just' Smith up to the dodge, in addition to Horatio here and myself, all being entered as contestants in the big Marathon