Not long after the wake, it was made evident to some of the members of Shenandoah Division that Frank McAndrew was not fitted by nature or education for the important office of Bodymaster, being far too generous, too much inclined to leniency—in fact, not half bloodthirsty enough. Among those who saw this more plainly than others were McHugh, at whose house, in those days, the Mollies held their meetings, Tom Hurley, John Gibbons, and Fergus, _alias_ Ferguson. McKenna said little on the subject, but while lying, apparently tippled to a state of insensibility, in Cleary’s, late one night, he heard sufficient to convince him of the existence of a plot, at the bottom of which stood Jack Kehoe, to replace McAndrew with a person that they were pleased to denominate as of “better material.” The officer in question, when spoken to upon the subject, the ensuing day, said he knew full well why so much dissatisfaction was growing up around him. It had its roots deep planted in his own unwillingness to engage in the schemes of murder and outrage that his opponents evidently desired should be immediately executed. McHugh was especially loud in denouncing him for failing to have Gomer James killed, as he also had been of similar inaction under the leadership of Mike Lawler, when that party was equally opposed to the same job under like circumstances. So far had McHugh committed himself in this direction, that he made no secret of demanding McAndrew’s expulsion from the organization. McAndrew’s argument, beyond its claim to compatibility with the impulses of humanity, was perfectly sensible, as well as unanswerable, and when brought out in the course of conversation, caused most of the decent and orderly persons in the division to coincide with him. His logic was that, when Cosgrove had been murdered by Gomer James, Mike Lawler, then Bodymaster, acted promptly—but without choosing to trumpet it over the county, keeping the thing to himself—and, among others, appointed an own cousin of Cosgrove as one of the avengers. That nigh relative of the man for whose death retaliation was to be sought refused to act, and Lawler at once, and very properly, excused all the rest. McAndrew thought it rather late in the day for utter strangers to dig up the hatchet, unless there was a money reward offered by some one for the knocking of Gomer James into eternity. Of that he was not so sure. If something of the sort was not in the wind, why were such men as Hurley, Gibbons, and McHugh so exceedingly anxious?