At the close of the month, a number of strange men arrived at Frackville, to work in the mines, from Philadelphia, with a few engineers for the railway company, the railroaders having long before submitted to a reduction of ten per cent., refusing longer to hold out with the miners and other laborers, but the imported workmen had to be sent home, and dare not go to their employment, so hostile were the demonstrations made against them by the Mollies and members of the Laborers’ Union. Then came the news that the telegraph office at Summit Station had been fired and burnt to the ground. It was supposed to have resulted from the act of an incendiary. Not long after, a railway train, loaded with coal, was thrown from the track and the cars badly smashed up. Many Mollies lived in the neighborhood, and these deeds were probably performed by members brought from a distance. In view of the frequency of these occurrences in the mining country, McKenna now suggested that Mr. Franklin send policemen to different places, with orders to openly make investigations, and also act as a preventive of further difficulties. It was impossible for the operative to do more than he was doing. The magistrates were powerless, and other county officials in the same predicament. ————●———— CHAPTER XXV. PLOT TO DESTROY THE CATAWISSA BRIDGES Before the opening of spring, McKenna fully recovered his health—at least was well enough to join his friends in many of their midnight and other carousals and sprees. It was afterward remembered by his associates, that as soon as any dark deeds were done, he generally managed, sick or intoxicated, to make his appearance in the vicinity of the occurrences. But these slight eccentricities in the behavior of the wild Irishman of the mountains passed at the time unnoticed by the Mollies. That he came and went they knew, but questioned not the why or wherefore. So little were they on the alert for anything Jim McKenna might do, that, in reality, they seemed to think the very act he performed the most natural for a man of his supposed character under the attending circumstances. While looking after the threatened destruction of the high and costly bridges of the Catawissa Railway—of these more hereafter—the detective had a queer adventure, in the neighborhood of Ringtown Mountain, that his reports make no mention of, but a description of which the writer has verbally received within the past few months. Chancing to be in Girardville, on a visit to Jack Kehoe, the operative encountered Frank McAndrew and a miner named Maguire—the latter being a Mollie by name as well as by nature—both of whom were perceptibly the worse for much spirits they had imbibed during the day, and they found it very difficult to guide their own movements, unaided, over the homeward road, which was still deeply covered with snow. Kehoe