“Terminal moraine, dummy.”
“Well, who put it there?”
“Say,” exclaimed Gil with disgust, “if you listened to the scoutmaster’s talks instead of skylarking around at troop meetings and stealing Fat Crampton’s hat, you’d learn not to be so ignorant. A terminal moraine is a pile of rocks brought down by a glacier in the days when all the part of the world north of here was covered with ice. You’ve heard of the Glacial Age, haven’t you? Well, when the ice moved down from the North Pole it pushed a lot of rocks ahead of it, right over the ground. Now, when old Mr. Glacier got this far, he heard the five o’clock whistle blow or something, so he dropped that pile of rocks he was carrying, and started to melt. When we hike up there, you can see markings on the rocks where they got scratched being pulled along over the ground.” Gil finished his lecture by throwing away his chewed grass-stem and carefully pulling another.
Blackie rose and held up his hand to shade his squinting eyes while he peered at the slide of boulders which, according to Gil’s story, had been brought there in such a dramatic manner.
“All right, I believe you,” he said; but he continued to stare.
Half-hidden among the pines and mountain maples, clinging to the side of the mountain at the end of a thin line of road that ran above, Blackie saw the faded clapboards and weathered roof of a house. There was not a sign of life about it. The sinking sun, nearing its last stand above the Lenape ridge, was reflected in all its bloodiness in two upstairs windows of that dark and ominous dwelling; the afterglow swirled and glinted with the color of molten copper. A little breeze blew up from the lake, a breeze not too warm for late June; and Blackie shivered slightly as it struck his back. He didn’t know why, but the sight of that dead, hidden house scared him—just a little. He thought it looked like a skull, lost among the trees. There must be some mystery about a house like that.
“Gil!”
“Well, what is it now, youngster?”
“Does anybody live in that old house up there?”
“Sure. That’s where old Rattlesnake Joe lives. Some people around here call him the hermit. You can go up and see him some time. Now, have you got your breath back? If we don’t get going pretty soon, the gang will be in ahead of us, and we’ll be out of luck for getting a good bunk.”