The lines ran on and on. The children’s voices sounded queer and echoing in the long tunnel. Anne kept close to Dick, and half wished she hadn’t come. Then she remembered that George had called her a coward, and she put up her head determined not to show that she was scared.

Jock talked almost without stopping. “I’ve never done anything like this in my life. I call this a proper adventure, hunting for spook-trains in a dark tunnel. It makes me feel nice and shivery all over. I do hope we find the train. It simply must be here somewhere!”

They walked on and on and on. But there was no sign of any train. They came to where the tunnel forked into the second one, that used to run to Roker’s Vale. Julian flashed his torch on the enormous brick wall that stretched across the second tunnel.

“Yes, it’s well and truly bricked up,” he said. “So that only leaves this tunnel to explore. Come on.”

They went on again, little knowing that George and Timmy were behind that brick wall, hidden in a truck of the spook-train itself! They walked on and on down the lines, and found nothing interesting at all.

They saw a little round circle of bright light some way in front of them. “See that?” said Julian. “That must be the end of this tunnel — the opening that goes into Kilty Yard. Well — if the train isn’t between here and Kilty Yard, it’s gone!”

In silence they walked down the rest of the tunnel, and came out into the open air. Workshops were built all over Kilty Yard. The entrance to the tunnel was weed-grown and neglected. Weeds grew even across the lines there.

“Well, no train has been out of this tunnel here for years,” said Julian, looking at the thick weeds. “The wheels would have chopped the weeds to bits.”

“It’s extraordinary,” said Dick puzzled. “We’ve been right through the tunnel — and there’s no train there at all — yet we know it goes in and out of it. What’s happened to it?”

“It is a spook-train,” said Jock, his face red with excitement. “Must be. It only exists at night, and then comes out on its lines, like it used to do scores of years ago.”

“I don’t like thinking that,” said Anne, troubled. “It’s a horrid thought.”

“What are we going to do now?” said Julian. “We seem to have come to a blank. No train — nothing to see — empty tunnel. What a dull end to an adventure.”

“Let’s walk back all the way again,” said Jock — he wanted to squeeze as much out of this adventure as he could. “I know we shan’t see the train this time any more than we did the last time — but you never know!”

“I’m not coming through that tunnel again,” said Anne. “I want to be out in the sun. I’ll walk over the top of the tunnel, along the path there that Julian took the other night — and you three can walk back, and meet me the other end.”