Betty and the other girls hung back in a frightened group. The maid's
voice continued to ring out, and now Mrs. Nelson could be heard
demanding to know what was the matter.

"Around to the side, fellows!" commanded Allen. "There's an outer door
they'll probably try for."

"But who'll guard the front here?" asked Amy's brother.

"Let Percy do that!" Allen flung back over his shoulder. "He probably
won't come with us, anyhow," he added.

The three young men hastened around to the side of the cottage, while
Percy, hardly knowing what to do, remained with the girls in front. At
the side was an old-fashioned, slanting cellar door, the kind celebrated
in song as the one down which children slide, to the no small damage of
their clothes.

As Allen and his chums reached a point where they could view this door,
they saw it suddenly flung up with a bang, and three men spring up the
stone steps.

"There they are!" yelled Roy.

"After 'em!" shouted Henry Blackford.

"It wasn't a false alarm, anyhow," added Allen. "Hold on there!" he
cried. "Stop! Who are you? What do you want? Stop!"

But neither the commands nor the questions halted the men. They ran on,
with never a word of answer or defiance flung back--dogged shadows
fleeing through the moonlight to the shrubbery-encompassed grounds of
Edgemere.

"Stop, or I'll shoot!" cried Roy.

"Oh!" screamed Grace, covering her ears.

"Good bluff, all right," complimented Allen. "But it won't work."

Nor did it. Roy's bright idea went for naught, for the men still crashed
on. They were lost sight of now behind a screen of bushes, but the boys
were not going to give up the pursuit so easily.

"Come on!" called Allen. "We'll have them in another minute! They can't
get over the stone wall."

"Stone wall?" echoed Henry.

"Sush! It was another bluff, just as my threat was to shoot," cautioned
Roy. "It may turn them back."

But it did not. Evidently the men knew the grounds about Edgemere as
well as did the boys, for there was no sign of a halt in their headlong
pace. On they crashed through bushes and underbrush, dodging among the
trees of the garden, and minding not the flower beds they trampled under
foot.

"They're getting away from us," remarked Henry, who was panting along
beside Allen.

"Yes, they evidently had a line of retreat all marked out."

"Who are they?"

"Haven't the least idea. Tramps, maybe--maybe something worse."

"You mean----"

"I don't know