ard in the dark to the front of the stone house, opened the door and
ran out. At the same moment they heard shouts from the house, and then
shots were fired, the bullets passing over their heads. They returned
the shots, and heard a yell, and a sudden slamming of a door, and then a
cry from up the bank:

"Hallo! Dick, Bob, are you there?"

"Yes, Mark, coming right along!" shouted Dick, and then he and Bob
hurried up the steep bank, presently seeing lanterns and a number of the
Liberty Boys.

"We had some little trouble in finding the place," declared Mark, when
Dick and Bob joined him and the rest, there being fully a score of them.
"The young ladies had no idea where the wretches had gone, but we picked
up the trail at length and then had less difficulty in following it.
Where were you?"

"In the stone house--a regular nest of thieves," Dick answered. "I must
have a look at the place later."

There was no further sound from below, and the boys went on to the top,
where they found several of the Liberty Boys and the two girls.

Dick and Bob now jumped into the saddle and resumed their interrupted
ride, going with the girls to the house in Maiden Lane. The friends of
Alice and Edith were very charming girls, and the boys spent an hour or
two very pleasantly, telling the story of their adventures in the
afternoon and evening, and talking of the situation in in the city. The
boys at length left the house to return to the camp, Alice and Edith
expressing considerable anxiety, however, lest they be way-laid by the
men who had already made an unsuccessful attempt to keep them prisoners.

In a short time they were back in camp, the occasional tramp of a sentry
or the sudden flaring up of a fire from a puff of night air being the
only things to show that there was any one there. The Liberty Boys were
always vigilant, for one never knew when an enemy might be about, and
Dick had taught them to be on the lookout at all times, whether they
expected a foe or not. After breakfast Dick took a party of about a
dozen of the boys in addition to Bob, and set out for the stone house on
the river. Reaching the lane, the boys dismounted, the descent being
rather too steep for the horses, and Dick, Bob and seven or eight others
went down. The door toward the road was closed and there was no sign of
life about the place. Dick and Bob went down to the shore where there
was a little wharf, and here they found a door on the lower story, t