when they were hemmed in by a crowd, and escaped by passing themselves off as farmers from Westchester. Had they been discovered, they would have been killed on the spot. DETECTIVE FORCE. The duties of this force are well known, but during the riots they had something more important to do than to work up individual cases. The force, with John Young as chief, and M. B. Morse as clerk, consisted in all of seventeen persons. These men are selected for their superior intelligence, shrewdness, sagacity, and undoubted courage. Full of resources, they must also be cool, collected, and fearless. During the riots they were kept at work day and night, obtaining knowledge of facts that no others could get, and thus supplying the different precincts and head-quarters with invaluable information. Their duty was a most perilous one, for it called them to go into the very heart of the turbulent districts; nay, into the very midst of the mob, where detection would have been followed by death, and that of the most horrible kind. Chief Young, with his clerk, was engaged at head-quarters, so that fifteen men had to perform the required work for the whole city. Sometimes alone, sometimes two or three together, they seemed omnipresent. In all sorts of disguises, feigning all sorts of employments and characters, sometimes on horseback and again driving an old cart or a hack, they pressed with the most imperturbable effrontery into the very vortex of danger. Ever on the watch, and accustomed to notice every expression of the countenance, they would discover at a single glance when they were suspected, and remove the suspicion at once by some clever device. Sometimes one of them, seeing himself watched, would quietly ascend the steps of a residence, and ringing the bell, make some inquiry as though he were on business, and then deliberately walk off; or if he thought it would not do to have his face too closely scanned, he would step inside and wait till the crowd moved on. Sometimes, with a stone or club in their hands, they would shout with the loudest, and engaging in conversation with the ringleaders themselves, ascertain their next move; then quietly slip away to the nearest station, and telegraph to head-quarters the information. When the telegraph had been cut off, they had to take the place of the wires, and carry through the very heart of the crowd their news to the department.