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.
And that very night, when Doctor Cadmus, hastily summoned to the home of Mrs.Kinkaid, examined the work of the deranged dweller of the quarry cave, he had pronounced it simply marvelous the clever way in which the other had set those bones and put a splint on the leg, with such clumsy means for working at hand.