This was all mighty interesting to Hugh, and he determined that he would let no grass grow under his feet until he had seen to it that the man with the deranged mind was once more restored to his family.  But the first thing to be done was to get poor K. K. safely back home.

So he turned to the man and spoke to him, telling him that they wished to get their comrade to the car, and at the same time thanking him warmly for all he had done.  Not a single word in reply did Hugh receive.  The man listened and nodded his head, as though he could dimly understand what the boy was saying.  Evidently he was in something of a dazed condition, if, as K. K. affirmed, his senses were beginning to assume a normal condition after years of darkness.

It was a terrible job getting K. K. down from that elevated place.  The man showed them how best to manage.  He seemed really solicitous, and it could be seen that he had taken quite a liking to K. K. during their brief intercourse, since the latter had been found groaning on the ground.

Eventually the level below the cliff was attained.  Poor K. K. had groaned many times, hard though he fought to repress the sounds, for it was unavoidable that he should receive many jostlings while being transferred to the lower level.

Then they made their way across the open space, and finally arrived at the waiting car, in which the injured youth was deposited and made as comfortable as the conditions allowed.  The deranged man watched all this with a wistful gleam in his eye.  He had fled from his kind while still gripped in the darkness of madness, but with the first glimmer of reason being seated once more on its throne he commenced to yearn after human fellowship again.

Since the boys had all taken such a deep-seated interest in the matter it may be proper before the “ghost” of the haunted quarry is dropped altogether from the story to state that the very next morning Hugh went over to Hackensack and electrified the Coursen family with certain remarkable news he brought.  It ended in their all starting forth and arriving at the quarry.  They found the demented man awaiting their coming as though he had guessed what Hugh had in his mind.  More than that he greeted them soberly, and called each member of the family by name, something he had not been able to do since that dark cloud descended upon his mind years back.

There seemed reason to believe that in due time Doctor Coursen might regain his full senses again and spend a few years more with his delighted relatives before the end came.

Hugh, of course, learned all about him and how he had served years in the army, first as a sergeant in the Signal Corps, and later on becoming a surgeon of considerable reputation before the accident in the tropics deprived him of his reason.  Perhaps it had been the utterly helpless condition of poor K. K., when he came accidentally upon the injured boy, that had strongly appealed to the surgical spirit that still lay dormant in the brain and fingers of the insane man and which had been the main cause of the light of reason returning—­surgery had been his passion, and the familiar work took him back to other days, apparently.