ich was going at good speed, that cosmopolitan
saw that the number on the lamps was a wrong one; and so they kept on.
Another carriage was passed at the same speed, their horses by this time
dripping as if they had been plunged into the river, but the driver of
hack No. 2980 going ahead under the influence of a private five dollars
and the promise of an extraordinary glass of brandy. At Twenty-eighth
Street they jerked the check-string and the driver pulled up. There was
nothing in sight, short of the railroad tunnel.

"We have lost them!" said Harding, whose organ of hopefulness was not so
large as that of his friend.

"Humph! maybe so!" was Leslie's reply, his eyes peering out of the
windows on all sides, meanwhile. "One thing is certain, that I am not
going to bed until I find that hack and know where it has been
to-night!"

At that moment, with better fortune than two such wild-goose chasers
deserved, they saw the lamps of a carriage flash across Twenty-eighth
Street, going up Lexington Avenue.

"By George! there they are!" said the sanguine Leslie.

"Maybe so!" was the reply of Harding, echoing the words his friend had
used the moment before.

A word from Leslie to the driver, and away went the carriage down
Twenty-eighth Street toward Lexington Avenue. On the avenue there was a
carriage ahead, driving at good speed but not at such a headlong rate as
their own had been pursuing. Leslie pulled the check-string. "Pass that
carriage!" he said to the driver, and the horses sprung out at full
speed again. The speed of the carriage ahead did not increase: whoever
occupied it probably had no idea of being pursued. Before it had gone
two blocks further the pursuers had passed it, and Tom Leslie brought
his hand down upon Harding's leg with a force that made him wince, as he
saw the number on the near lamp.

"Got them, by the tail of the holy camel!"

It was indeed the same carriage that had left Prince Street less than a
quarter of an hour before. They were now ahead of it, and it would not
answer either to slacken speed so perceptibly as to let it pass, or to
turn back to meet it. Either course might excite apprehension, if there
was really anything worth watching in the adventure. A word more to the
driver arranged all. They wheeled down Thirty-fourth Street to Third
Avenue, drove rapidly around the two blocks to Thirty-sixth, and came
out again on Lexington, with the carriage just ahead of them and a fine
oppo