The Scranton High Chums on the Cinder Path | Page 7

We're only
losing time here, and it seems as though the thing doesn't mean to give
us another sample of that swan song."
"For which, thanks!" sighed Julius. "I know music when I hear it, and if
that's what they call a song of the dying 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