Boyle, brimful of novel resources, puzzled the “mystery” chaps by his bold ingenuity and usually beat them at their own game. He squarely overmatched the field-marshals of manipulation. His fertile brain originated the plan of drilling Grandin No. 4 and other test wells. The night he went to drill the Grace well through the sand he paid the ferryman at Dunham’s Mills not to answer any calls until morning, thus cutting off all chance of pursuit and surprise. At the well Boyle wrote an order to deliver the well to Tennent, signing it Pickwick, and the drillers retired to bed! Somebody had been there before them and poured back the sand-pumpings. At the Patterson well Boyle devised a code of tin-horn signals that outwitted the men inside the derrick and flashed the result to Gusher City. The number of expedients continually devised was a marvel. Thanks to the energy and ability of these tireless scouts, of whose midnight exploits, wild rides, hairbreadth escapes and queer adventures many pages could be written, the effect of “mysteries” was frequently neutralized and at length the whole system of guarded wells, bull-dogs and shot-guns was eliminated. [Illustration: P. M. SHANNON.] The Forest-Warren white-sand pools marked a new era in developments, with new ideas and new methods to hoodoo speculation. Cherry Grove had wilted from twenty-five-thousand barrels in September to three-thousand in December, when Cooper Hill loomed above the horizon and Balltown appeared on deck. Shallow wells had been sunk far up Tionesta Creek in 1862-3. Near the two dwellings, saw-mill, school-house and barn dubbed Foxburg, the stamping-ground of deer-hunters and bark-peelers, Marcus Hulings—his name is a synonym for successful wildcatting—in 1876 drilled a well that smacked of oil. The derrick stood ten years and globules of grease bubbled up from the depths, a thousand feet beneath. C. A. Shultz, a piano-tuner, taking his cue from the Hulings well, interested Frederick Morck, a Warren jeweler, and leased the Fox estate and contiguous lands in 1881. The Blue-Jay and two Darling wells, small producers, created a ripple which dry-holes evaporated. They were on Warrant 2991, Howe township, known to fame as the Cooper tract, north-west of Foxburg. The conditions of the lease required a well at the western end of the warrant. Cherry Grove was at its zenith, crude was flirting with the fifties and operators considered the Blue-Jay chick a lean bird. J. Mainwaring leased one-hundred acres from Morck & Shultz and built a rig at the head of a wild ravine, in the sunless woodland, a half-mile from Tionesta Creek. He lost faith and the Mainwaring lease and rig passed to P. M. Shannon, of Bradford. Born in Clarion county, Philip Martin Shannon enlisted at fourteen, served gallantly through the war, traveled as salesman for a Pittsburg house and in 1870 cast his lot with the oilmen at Parker. A pioneer at Millerstown and its burgess in 1874, he filled the office capably and in