Page:Harry Castlemon - The Steel Horse.djvu/361

 out of the gate and turned down the road. "I still think that if Mr. Holmes and a few determined men would wake up and go about it in earnest, they could put an end to this reign of terror. I can't see why they don't try it."

But there was one thing that Roy and his friends did not know, and Mr. Holmes had forgotten to speak of it. There was not a single building in Glen's Falls that had a dollar's worth of insurance upon it. The risks had all been canceled at the breaking out of the war of the Rebellion, and there had been none taken there since. This was one thing that made Mr. Holmes and his neighbors so very timid.

The town of Glen's Falls was a dreary looking spot, as the boys found when they came to ride through it. There was a forest of fine shade-trees on each side of the wide principal thoroughfare, but there was grass instead of walks under them, and the buildings behind were rapidly falling to pieces. The evidences of former prosperity that met their eyes on every hand proved that there had once been