“Then there really are lights?” asked Carl.
“There certainly are!” replied Ben.
“What kind of an old shop, is it?” asked Jimmie.
“It’s one of the old-time fortresses,” replied Ben. “It is built on a steep mountainside and guards a pass between this valley and one beyond. It looks as if it might have been a rather formidable fortress a few hundred years ago, but now a shot from a modern gun would send the battlements flying into the valley.”
“But why the lights?” demanded Jimmie.
“That’s the mystery!” Ben answered. “They’re ghost lights!”
“Up to within a few months,” Mr. Havens began, “this fortress has never attracted much attention. It is said to be rather a large fortification, and some of the apartments are said to extend under the cliff, in the same manner as many of the gun rooms on Gibraltar extend into the interior of that solid old rock.”
“More subterranean passages!” groaned Jimmie. “I never want to see or hear of one again. Ever since that experience at the alleged temple they will always smell of wild animals and powder smoke.”
“A few months ago,” the millionaire aviator continued, smiling tolerantly at the boy, “ghostly lights began making their appearance in the vicinity of the fort. American scientists who were in this part of the country at that time made a careful investigation of the demonstrations, and reported that the illuminations existed only in the imaginations of the natives. And yet, it is certain that the scientists were mistaken.”
“More bunk!” exclaimed Carl.