“There she is!” cried Sam.

“Hurry up, Captain Carson!” called out Dick.  “If you don’t hurry we will lose the fellows we are after, sure.”

“I am hurrying as much as I can,” replied the captain.

In five minutes more they gained one end of the dock and the Rovers leaped ashore.  The Beaver was at the other end, discharging passengers at one gang plank and freight at another.

“See anything of them?” asked Sam.

“Yes, there they are!” shouted Tom, and pointed to the street beyond the dock.

“I see them,” returned Dick.  “Come on!” And he started for the street, as swiftly as his feet could carry him.

He was well in advance of Sam and Tom when Dan Baxter, looking back, espied him.

“Hi, Flapp, we must leg it!” cried Baxter, in quick alarm.

“Eh?” queried Lew Flapp.  “What’s wrong now?”

“They are after us!”

“Who?”

“The three Rover Boys.  Come on!”

The former bully of Putnam Hall glanced back and saw that Dan Baxter (and he too had been a bully at the Hall) was right.

“Where shall we go to?” he asked in sudden fright.

“Follow me!” And away went Dan Baxter up the street with Flapp at his heels.  Dick, Tom, and Sam came after them, with a number of strangers between.

“Do you think we can catch them?” asked Tom.

“We’ve got to catch them,” answered Dick.  “If you see a policeman tell him to come along—­that we are after a couple of criminals.”

Having passed up one street for a block, Baxter and Flapp made a turn and pursued their course down a thoroughfare running parallel to the river.

Here were located a number of factories and mills, with several tenement houses and low groggeries between.

“They are after us yet,” panted Flapp, after running for several minutes.  “Say, I can’t keep this up much longer.”

“Come in here,” was Dan Baxter’s quick reply, and he shot into a small lumber yard attached to a box factory.  It was now after six o’clock and the factory had shut down for the day.

Once in the lumber yard they hurried around several corners, and presently came to a shed used for drying lumber.  From this shed there was a small door leading into the factory proper.

“I reckon we are safe enough here,” said Dan Baxter, as they halted in the shed and crouched down back of a pile of boards.

“Yes, but we can’t stay here forever,” replied Lew Flapp.

“We can stay as long as they hang around, Flapp.”

In the meantime the Rover Boys reached the entrance to the yard, and Dick, who had kept the lead, called a halt.

“I am pretty certain they ran in here,” he declared.

“Then let us root them out,” said Tom.  “And the quicker the better.”

The others were willing, and they entered the small lumber yard without hesitation.  As there were but three wagonways, each took one, and all presently reached the entrance to the drying shed.