A day later McKenna encountered Nicholas Brennan, a coal-miner from the vicinity of Mt. Pleasant, near Minersville. Brennan gave out that he was also a traveler, engaged in going from one place to another for the purpose of securing work at his calling for the winter. Their pursuits being ostensibly similar, McKenna and Brennan soon struck up an intimacy. After the latter had more than once tasted liquor at McKenna’s expense, he thawed out considerably, became pliable and talkative, and soon had much to remark about “the power that made English landlords quake.” But he gave it as his opinion that such a force could accomplish very little, if anything, in the anthracite country of Pennsylvania, and pretended to believe the Miners’ and Laborers’ Union, which had recently been formed, would prove of no benefit to working-men. Brennan prided himself upon his discerning shrewdness, and said, early in his conversation with the operative, he knew, at once, upon first fixing his eye on him, that he, McKenna, was a boatman, or canal hand, the correctness of which allegation, for his own purposes, that gentleman felt constrained to acknowledge. Brennan recommended his new-found associate to go to Tamaqua, or Mahanoy City, where he thought mining was moving more briskly than in any other portion of the State—especially was it more lively than in the neighborhood of Pottsville. He concluded his lengthy harangue by remarking, in a significant way—referring to the localities named: “There’s the ground where the boys are true!” “Then they are the very places I want to get work in,” responded McKenna, and, watching the countenance of Brennan, he was sure he discovered in it an expression of disappointment, as though the reply made to “the ground where the boys were true” was not exactly the one he had anticipated receiving. Pretending, however, not to notice it, the detective proposed a game at cards, “jist for the fun of the thing,” and, after that ended, Brennan was so much under the influence of spirits, his companion was forced to cut loose from him. Nothing more could be elicited, but McKenna was well satisfied that, if not a simon-pure Mollie Maguire, his late opponent in euchre knew more about the society than he cared to impart to a stranger. He made mental note of the words: “There’s the ground where the boys are true!” and could not help thinking they were in some way connected with the mysterious order. Brennan was kind enough to give him the names of some of his friends in the mines; these he also treasured in his memory, to be made use of as occasion presented.