The details of their operations, their disguises, ingenious contrivances, deceptions, and boldness in carrying out their object, would make an attractive chapter in itself. Often compelled to mingle with the mob, always obliged to conceal what they were about, not daring to raise a pole or handle a wire unless cautiously or secretly, they yet restored the lines in the north section by morning, and those in the south by Wednesday evening. Sometimes they were compelled to carry a wire over the top of a house, sometimes round it, through a back-yard; in short, every device and expedient was resorted to by these daring, sharp-witted men. Once Polhamus had his boots burned off in tramping through the burning ruins of a building after the wires. Once he and Mr. Crowley came near being clubbed to death by the police, who mistook them for rioters, so ingeniously and like them were they at work among the ruins. Captain Brower rescued them, or their services might have ended on the spot. This work was kept steadily up during the continuation of the riots. On one occasion, Mr. Crowley, hearing that the wires were down in the Ninth and Tenth Avenues, hastened thither alone, when he encountered a large mob. Fearing to pass through it he hesitated a moment, when he noticed a carriage driving in the direction he wished to go, in which was a Catholic priest. He immediately hailed it and was taken in. As the carriage entered the mob, the latter surrounded it, and supposing the inmates were reporters, began to yell "Down with the d--d reporters;" but the moment they recognized the priest, they allowed it to pass. Often the two would take a hack; and passing themselves off as drivers, go through infected districts, and search points to which they otherwise could not have gone. One time they were returning from an expedition through Third Avenue, and had reached Houston Street, when they were hailed by a gang of rioters, who demanded to be taken downtown. They had to comply, for the men were armed with pistols, and so took them in and kept along Houston Street, under the pretence of going down through Broadway, knowing that when they reached Mulberry Street they would be in hailing distance of the head-quarters of the police. It was just after daybreak, and Crowley and Polhamus urged on the horses, expecting in a few minutes to have their load safely locked up. The fellows evidently not liking the vicinity to which the drivers were taking them, ordered them to wheel about, which they were compelled to do, and drive under their direction to an old house in the Tenth Ward. There they got out, and offering the drivers a drink and fifty cents, let them go. On one occasion, Crowley, while examining the wires in Second Avenue, was suspected by the mob, who fell upon him, and it was only by the greatest coolness and adroitness he convinced them he was a rioter himself, and so escaped. At another time they were going along in a common wagon,