understanding this, the detective would not be working merely to right the wrongs of this man or that man, but to wipe off a dark blot which had fallen upon the escutcheon of Ireland, and which clouded the fair fame of every Irishman in America. Then he would meet the cry, in the mines and elsewhere, of “persecution for opinion’s sake,” and the danger of “a conflict between capital on the one side and labor on the other.” Would he be shrewd enough to detect the untruthfulness of one and the insincerity of the other? Surely here was a task for me, in the very outset, the fellow of which I had not encountered since the war of the rebellion. ————●———— CHAPTER II. THE MAN FOR THE WORK. By the time I had reached headquarters, in Chicago, I imagined that I might need a man for the Mollie Maguire operation, who, among other acquirements and qualifications, was also a practical miner. My plans had even partially assumed shape for a flying visit to some of the coal districts of Southern Illinois and Ohio, where it was possible I might chance upon a person of the needed character. Then it occurred to me, even though I could secure an experienced worker in the bituminous shafts and drifts, he would naturally be almost as much at fault in the art of delving in the slopes and gangways of the anthracite fields as one entirely uneducated in mining. He might have the trained muscle and capacity of bodily endurance, yet possess no available knowledge of the anthracite branch of the business. Then a party of this sort must necessarily be a stranger to the intricate duties of my profession, and have about everything to acquire from the lowest round of the ladder upward. There was another objection—and it had more weight than everything before enumerated: I could not rely upon the truthfulness and faithfulness of a new acquaintance as I might upon that of one who, after years of training under my own direction, had made himself an expert in the detection of criminals. Clearly, then, I must select my operative for this case, as for any other, from my regular force—at least employ a detective that had been connected with one or all of the offices in the Chain of Agencies. Who should it be? This was the all-important question. Several of my best men, who were, in most emergencies, mentally and physically capable of filling the place, I took occasion to carefully approach and sound as to their opinions and acts under certain supposititious and somewhat analogous circumstances but such as were not too nearly similar to those under consideration, and soon found that they would never do. One, who was precisely the man called for in other particulars, had an invalid wife and a family of small children, and I would not ask him to take the position. There was a chance that he might be disabled, or even lose his life, and thus