“Which lovely programme must include two nights spent under the roof of a haunted house!” gasped Billy, still wiping his streaming forehead, though he really should have been cooled off by this time.

“For my part,” spoke up Arthur Cameron, “nothing would please me better than the chance to say I’d run across a real ghost.  I’ve been reading lots of creepy stories connected with spooks, but they never could get me to believe in such silly things.”

“Same here,” added the Stallings boy, though his voice sounded a trifle unsteady as Hugh could not help noticing.

“As for me,” the scout master remarked, “I considered it a fine chance for a little excitement.  I, too, had heard some stories about this gloomy make-believe castle that had been built in the lonely woods by old Judge Randall when he married a young wife, and wanted to carry her away from the rest of the world.  They say it’s getting to be an interesting ruin by now, though perhaps Alec’s aunt might choose to patch the crumbling walls up, if other things suited her.”

“Huh! takes all sorts of freaks to make this world,” grunted Billy.  “The idea of anybody actually wanting to bury themselves away up here, and never see a thing in the way of circus, baseball, winter hockey, Boy Scout rivalries and other good happenings.  The old Judge must have been crazy.”

“Well, lots of people suspected it when he started to build this castle,” said Alec, drily.  “They felt dead sure after it happened; for hold your breath now, fellows, because to be honest with you there was a terrible tragedy, and after the poor young wife was buried the judge lived as much as ten years in an asylum.  He had become a maniac, you see, from jealousy of his beautiful wife.”

“I suppose it’s all right, since there are four other fellows along,” Billy finally went on to say, “but honest Injun, if I had known all this at the start, I don’t believe I would have been so anxious to come.  I expect that old toothache of mine would have cropped up and kept me home.”

“The walking is good down to the station, Billy,” murmured Alec, “and we were told that a freight-train would come along around dark this evening, bound south, which was due to stop at the water-tank”

“That’ll be enough for you, Alec,” continued the fat boy, with a certain amount of dignity.  “You never knew me to show the white feather, and back down, once I put my shoulder to the wheel.  If the rest can stand it I ought to be able to do so.”

“Good for you, Billy,” cried Hugh.  “Alec here ought to make you an apology.  But since we’ve rested up, and there’s still half a mile to tramp, with the afternoon wearing on, suppose we make a fresh start.”

Soon they were trailing along the dimly seen road, which evidently was not used to any great extent by the few scattered farmers in that vicinity.  Most of the talk was in connection with the weird mansion toward which they were heading.  Alec was coaxed to relate a number of other facts he had managed to pick up regarding its romantic history.