ice that told of excitement.
"You see, it's K. K."

"What's happened to him?" demanded Hugh, his mind instantly
suggesting all manner of terrible possibilities, from a sudden attack
of sickness to an accident whereby his life might be in danger; for
with boys these things sometimes happen as unexpectedly as a flash of
lightning from a clear sky.

"Why, he never came back again from that run this afternoon, Hugh!"
Horatio was saying, in an awed tone now.

"What's that you're telling me?" exclaimed the astonished Hugh. "I
thought I saw K. K. with some of the other fellows when I was
starting home just before dusk came on, though, of course, I may have
been mistaken about it."

"You were, Hugh, you certainly were," Horatio assured him in a
softened tone. "His own mother ought to know, hadn't she? Well,
she's over here at our house right now, crying her eyes out, and
imagining all sorts of terrible things. You remember the Kinkaids
live close by us; and she knew her boy was going to take the run this
afternoon along with me, so she thought I could tell her if anything
had happened to detain him. Why, she says K. K. never missed his
supper before in all his life. It'd have to be something _fierce_ to
keep him away from his best meal of the whole day."

Hugh was thinking swiftly. He realized that this was no little
matter to be dismissed as unimportant. Something certainly must have
happened to detain K. K. for all this time. Several hours had
elapsed since the other fellows reached the terminus of the long run
at the athletic grounds. Why then had not K. K. shown up?

"Keep the rest till I get there, Horatio!" he told the other.

"Then you're sure coming, are you, Hugh?"

"Right away," Hugh added.

"Well, I'm glad, because you'll know what to do about it. And
there's something else!"

"Yes?"

"I've got something to tell you that, say, I didn't have the heart to
explain to K. K.'s mother, because she's bad enough frightened as it
is; but it's looking particularly ugly to me, now that he hasn't come
back. Oh! perhaps there is more'n a grain of truth in all those
terrible stories those hayseeds tell about that place!"

Hugh put up the receiver with a bang, made a dash for his cap,
slipped on his sweater, for he knew the night air was cold, and then
shot out of doors. Somehow those last few words of Horatio,
breathing of mystery as they did, had excited his curiosity until it
now reached fever-pitch