The request of the Bodymaster formed a good excuse for McKenna, who had early been directed by Mr. Franklin to investigate the murder, to go to Mahanoy City. Without McAndrew’s order, suspicion as to his calling might have been created among the Mollies of his division. It was all very proper, when the Secretary was known to have plenty of money, and little else to do, for him to chance around at localities where murders and other crimes had been perpetrated, but at this particular time he was putting on a sorry face, declaring that his income from rents had run several months behind, the county officers suspecting him of leaguing with counterfeiters—hence he could not safely get rid of his bogus currency—and, in fact, dressing very badly so that he would not be expected to have funds to expend in too many treats for his guzzling and expensive companions. Furnished with a safe cover, from which to carry on his observations, he at once commenced hunting up the facts connected with the shooting of Major. The Chief Burgess, as that official—usually the Mayor of a town—is called in the State of Pennsylvania, was not yet dead, but could hardly be expected to live more than a day or two with a bullet resting in a vital part. Major had been shot through the left breast, two inches above the heart. McKenna went to Clark’s house, the known rendezvous of the Mollies, of which I shall have more to say hereafter, and, finding the proprietor alone, started a conversation with him. Clark was an old man, and not a member of the order, but his two sons were Mollies. “An’ how is it about the bit o’ scrimmage ye had over here last Saturday?” commenced the operative. “Oh! it’s a bad affair altogether!” answered the landlord of the Emerald House. “Who fired the shot that brought the Chief Burgess down?” “That I can’t, fur the life of me, tell! There’s two stories about it; wan of them puts it on Dan Dougherty—but I belave him jist as innocent as the babe unborn—an’ the other charges it on Major’s own brother, William, hittin’ him be mischance, when firing afther the Hibernian company’s boys—for ye must know that the whole trouble came about thro’ a quarrel between the Hibernian an’ the Citizen fire companies. Wan is wholly made up of our countrymen, an’ the other of Modocs—English, German, Welsh an’ what not! I suppose ye know that?” “Yes! But who started the row?”