"H'm! I'm afraid we've lost him!" exclaimed Will, as they came to a standstill in the dark. "I wish we had a better light than these matches give. It's impossible to chase around here in the dark among all these boxes and packages, and with passages leading every which way."
"Listen!" exclaimed Harry. "There's some one coming this way."
There was the sound of more than one man coming toward them from the river side of the house.
"We might better conceal ourselves," whispered Will.
The three boys quickly drew to one side, and feeling a barrel standing near the wall, one dropped behind it, while another hid behind a box, and the other concealed himself in an angle of the wall. The sounds did not proceed from the passage through which the three boys had just passed, but from one on the right side, and seemed to come from more than one person and who were trying to proceed quietly, evidently with the intention of keeping their presence unknown as long as possible.
"They must be somewhere about here," they heard some one whisper. "We must never let them get away."
Then suddenly a lantern flashed its light over their heads, and they heard the words:
"Well, they're not here, at any rate."
The steps passed their hiding places, and the boys decided that there were three men.
"If we could meet them on our own ground, we'd be more than a match for them," muttered Harry. "But this strange place and in the dark, we'd be completely at their mercy."