"What if we pass all the way through to the other road, without learning a single thing, Hugh?" he went on to say; "do you mean to give it up, and head for home then and there?"
"Well, I should hope not, Thad!" burst out Horatio; "we're none of us built that way. Because a fellow gets a single knock-down in a fight ought he to throw up the sponge right away, and own himself beaten? Why, we started out to find K.K., and sleep isn't going to visit my eyes this night until we succeed. That's the way I look at it, and I reckon the rest of you are in the same boat."
"If such a thing should happen, Thad," said Hugh, sturdily, "we'll simply turn around and come back again; only, under the new conditions, 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 task, 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.
This being the case with the Juggins boy it was not to be wondered at that there could be traced a vein of actual gratification in his voice when he suddenly electrified his companions by exclaiming: