leave his mate and their helpless innocents to the cold charity of an unfeeling world. Another almost as good was soon to be married to an estimable young lady. A third had some blemish excluding him from the list, and I had not yet hit upon the agent to be sent to the land of mountains and dales and the home of the Mollie Maguires. One morning, however, as I was riding from home to Fifth Avenue—standing, as usual, upon the rear platform of a crowded West Side street car—I recognized in the person of the conductor an operative previously escaping consideration. He was engaged working his part of a delicate job connected with the railway interest, and for some months had not been in a position in which he was called upon to report to me personally. The thought instantly found lodgment in my mind: “If this man is mentally correct, and willing, he is just the instrument fitted for my mining operation.” I was satisfied that he could be spared from his car and the case he was assisting in, and another detective put in his place, and immediately upon reaching the office, sent a note to the young man’s boarding-house, asking him to meet me at my rooms as soon as his day’s work was ended, as I had something to submit for his consideration. James McParlan, the detective alluded to, was born in the province of Ulster, County Armagh, Parish of Mullabrack, Ireland, in 1844; consequently, at the date mentioned, was in his twenty-ninth year. His father and mother were living. He had been a member of my force for about a year. Coming to America in 1867, having previously seen some service in chemical works, at Gateshead, County Durham, England, and subsequently, in the same capacity, at Wallsend, England, the first place he filled after landing at Castle Garden was that of second clerk in a small grocery house on Ninth Avenue, city of New York. At a later period he became salesman for a country dealer in drygoods, named Cummings at Medina, Orleans County, in the same State. His salary was exceedingly small, and besides, not easily collectible; and, after a short apprenticeship to the profession of counter-jumping and measuring ribbons, laces, and calicoes, he resigned, and adopted Greeley’s advice to young men, with a course of travel due westward. Reaching Buffalo, he tarried there but a few days and then came to Chicago. After filling different situations, he applied for and secured employment in my establishment. Of medium height, a slim but wiry figure, well knit together; a clear hazel eye; hair of an auburn color, and bordering upon the style denominated as “sandy;” a forehead high, full, and well rounded forward; florid complexion, regular features, with beard and mustache a little darker than his hair, there was no mistaking McParlan’s place of nativity, even had not his slight accent betrayed his Celtic origin. He was in fact a fine specimen of the better class of immigrants to this country from the poet’s