“Yes,” said McKenna, with all the assurance imaginable, and without a second’s hesitation. “I _do_ remember, now you spake of it, but the thing had before gone clane out of me head! Jim McParlan? Why, sure, an’ he’s a crony of mine, over at Wilkesbarre, beyant, an’ faith, when I wor there last month, he said that I should inquire here for a letther for him, as he expected at wan time to come over an’ work wid Frank McAndrew as his butty, but got a better chance in Luzerne! Bad ’cess to me memory! I think there’s somethin’ in the whisky they hev in Shenandoah that sinds me wits all a wool-gatherin’! But never mind! Wid your permission, I’ll jist forward the letther to Jim, and write an’ tell him how it have been so delayed!” The suspicions of the clerk were dissipated in a moment, and he readily gave the document into McKenna’s hand. Had the recipient exhibited the least confusion or embarrassment, the probabilities were that his letter—unhappily misdirected by a new clerk in Philadelphia—must have gone to the Dead Letter Office, in Washington, where it would have been opened and returned to Philadelphia. In the meantime both Mr. Franklin and McKenna would have felt much disturbed by its loss. The operative realized the mistake in its full extent, and sat down and wrote a line asking that, so long as he remained in the coal country, such accidents might be carefully guarded against; and his wishes were obeyed. The strike of the miners against the rates paid for labor, for 1874, began in October, with the usual result, the first to kick being the men in Luzerne County. This was not a Mollie movement, and its ringleaders were promptly arrested by Sheriff Whittaker. But the end was not yet.