While his boon companions washed their sodden brains publicly in their beer, Mack, always affecting to be easily susceptible to the effects of Old Crow, was quietly taking mental notes. Accordingly it was not long before he discovered that his friends, when under the influence of Bacchus, were apt to give up certain secret pass-words. Having listened to one of these several times, he carefully learned the exact phrase, and soon after, finding the landlord alone, he invited him to take a drink. Leaning mysteriously over the counter he repeated the mystic pass-word. "What," cried the astonished landlord, "are _you_ one of them things?"—meaning a Molly Maguire. "Troth, that's what they call me," replied the North-of-Ireland man. Dormer unsuspectingly began from that day to treat Mack as one of the insiders, taking his word that he had been in the Hibernian Order at Buffalo, but had been obliged to leave on account of a serious crime. He was now, he confessed, in hiding, and consequently became an object of sympathy and solicitude to the Irishmen. When it came, however, to introducing Mack to genuine Hibernians, matters advanced less smoothly, since the self-styled Molly did not understand the "grip" and had only one single pass-word to back his claim. And so it happened that on the occasion of his being presented to one Cooney, a Molly of note and standing, the latter, having made certain signs which remained unanswered, jumped from his toady-chair declaring that Mack was an elemental liar. The spy brazened the matter out, boldly called the bar for drinks and pretending to have drunk too deeply fell in a stupor to the floor. His enemy thereupon proposed to disintegrate the spy by jumping on him, but the "bunch" vetoed this proposal, Mack being admittedly a good fellow. Again Cooney took up the frenzied word, crying: "I wouldn't take his oath to it acrast his mother's corp. No—not till he brung me a card from his body-master."