“I don’t hear ’em――they must be around in front,” Dick jerked out; but when they essayed to paddle around the house they found the way blocked by a chicken-wire fence. And the precious seconds of time were racing. Balked by the fence, they quickly handed the canoe back to the rear entrance, and tying it to a porch post, jumped out to wade through the open door into the kitchen. There was no light save that which came from the distant bonfires, and this was partly cut off by the half-drawn window shades. The water was over knee-deep on the house floor, and Dick stumbled over a floating chair. “Queer we don’t see or hear anything of ’em,” he said. Then: “Maybe they’re up-stairs――sure, that’s where they’d be, trying to flag somebody from the windows on the street. I believe that’s them you can hear yelling right now.” The answer to that suggestion, of course, was to try to find the way to the upper story, and to do it swiftly. Larry laid hold of the knob of the first door that he came to, hauled it open against the impending drag of the flood, and plunged blindly ahead, with Dick at his heels. At the first step both of them lost their footing and found themselves floundering in utter darkness and in water over their heads. In his haste and excitement Larry had opened the door leading to the cellar. Since both were good swimmers there was nothing much to the plunge but a sudden ducking, and as they were both soaked to the skin anyway, this didn’t matter. But when they groped around and got the cellar stair under their feet, old Brother Calamity reached out and grabbed them. By some twist of the rising flood the cellar door had been swung to, and there must have been a spring catch on it. For when they braced themselves as best they could on the steps and tried to open it, it wouldn’t move. “Gee!” said Dick, with his teeth chattering, “we’re trapped right, this time. When the water fills this stairwell we’ll drown!” Almost as he spoke they heard thumping footsteps on the house stair over their heads, followed by a great splashing in the room beyond the trapping door. Then, quite distinctly, a voice which they both recognized as that of the sham “lame dog” who had once taken a thrashing at Larry’s hands in Farmer Holdsworth’s stubble field, shouted: “Come on, Bry!――here’s a canoe tied to the back porch. Bring that sack of swag and hop in.” And the splashing stopped abruptly with a double tumble into the boat and a quick dipping of paddles. “Huh!” Dick shivered; “Bry Underhill and Snitty Crawford. And neither one of them stopped to think that there might be somebody else needing that canoe. Besides that, they were _looting_!” “Never mind them,” Larry put in. “We’ve got to get out of this trap someway. Brace your feet against the wall and hold me while I shove.”