story a daring reporter said he'd investigate. He spent a night
there, and actually captured the ghost, who turned out to be just an
ordinary man, living on a place adjoining the haunted estate. He
owned up to being the pallid specter that had been giving the house
such a bad name; and said he wanted to buy the property in for a
song, as it would find no other purchaser if it had such an evil
reputation. Now, maybe somebody wants this quarry for thirty cents,
and this is his way of scaring other would-be purchasers away. We
don't want to butt in on any such game, you see."

Hugh and the others laughed at such a clever explanation.

"Whatever the truth may be," said Hugh, "I hardly believe it'll turn
out anything like that, K. K. But you might as well start on. We're
only losing time here, and it seems as though the _thing_ doesn't
mean to give as 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,