“While the British were encamped on this side of Second river, near the steel works, the grandfather of Mr. Tompkins, who was a scout in the American Army and noted as an athlete, was reconnoitering, with four companions, on the old Belleville road. They accidentally came upon a picket post in the dusk, the officer of which rode up and cried out: ‘Who you be for?’ Tompkins, to gain time, asked the same question, ‘Who you be for?’ ‘For King George’, said the English officer. ‘We be for the Continental Congress’, shouted Tompkins as he sprang into the woods. There was a fence that stood in the way, and as Tompkins vaulted over it the entire picket guard fired. Two of Tompkins’s companions who, instead of jumping the fence had climbed over it, were killed, but the former escaped by the balls passing under him as he jumped. One of the scouts who was killed on that occasion lies buried in the old Bloomfield grave yard. The enemy probably not knowing that they had killed any one, left the bodies where they fell.” THE MAGAZINE HOUSE. The march of improvement, in the opening of Woodside avenue, has recently caused the destruction of the “Magazine house”, a low stone building which stood back of the present Summerfield M. E. Church. This dated back to about 1812, when it was built for the storing of powder made at the Decatur Powder Works, which were located on the site of the present De Witt Wire Works, Belleville. There was a spirit of mystery and adventure about the place that somehow tickled my boyish fancy greatly, and I always passed it with a sense of adventure, but the above is all that can be said of the spot. When Jacob Rutan was building the calico print works on Second river he lived here and his wife, Elizabeth, a member of the King family, formerly of the River road, boarded the men who were doing the mason work. How they all slept in this small building is a mystery. EARLY LANES. Just below the powder house; in fact, opposite the point where Elwood place runs into Summer avenue, the John Morris Keen lane led away to the Bloomfield road. This, it appears, was part of a lane from the River road, the easterly section of which was known as the Stimis lane. Whether the latter was opened for the purpose or, being established, was merely used because convenient, has not been made plain, but I am told that formerly a paper mill stood on the Bloomfield road, and that the paper was made from reeds gathered on the Hackensack meadows, brought up the Passaic river, landed possibly at the Point House landing and carted from there via the two lanes to the mill. THE HAUNT OF THE HIGHWAYMAN.