“True for ye! But the job was done clanely, as you’ll admit! By the same token, they fetched my wife on the stand at the coroner’s inquest, an’ before lavin’ home she cried, an’ said she had seen me turn over the pistol to some men, an’ belaved I, Kerrigan, Roarty, and Duffy knew all about the affair. Fur all that, my old woman made a fust-rate witness, an’ let out nothing! There wus somethin’ said about a man that was aslape on my front steps, the night of the killin’. He wasn’t one of ’em! That wor Jo McGehan, who lives at Coaldale, an’ he was drunk as a piper, at the same time. He’s a white-haired, heavy fellow, is Jo, an’ a brother-in-law of big John Gallagher!” “Isn’t he, at the same time, a brother of my friend, Hugh McGehan!” inquired the detective, carelessly. “I don’t know,” was the response; but Carroll immediately added: “When I saw the two policemen pass my house together—Yost and McCarron—I wanted the men not to do the job that night, but they swore they had been over before for the purpose, and they would not be balked—do it they did!” Mrs. Carroll had sworn, before the coroner, that she knew Tom Duffy had not been one of the murderers, for he slept at her house, was not absent, and could not have gone out without her knowledge, and that she had never heard Duffy or Kerrigan use threats against Yost. The detective had knowledge, from the bullet which was extracted from Yost’s side, where it had lodged, that the shooting was done with a revolver carrying a number thirty or thirty-two cartridge. It was his duty to find that particular pistol. To aid in the search he was furnished with a new revolver, from Philadelphia, bearing a thirty-two cartridge. This he constantly carried, claiming that he had stolen it, in Tamaqua, and, on one or two special occasions, exhibiting the weapon with part of the loading abstracted, remarking that it was of little use to him, as he did not dare, from the circumstance of its illegal ownership, ask for or purchase any cartridges to fit it. How he employed the Smith and Wesson to good effect may be related hereafter. ————●———— CHAPTER XXXVII. KERRIGAN’S SISTER-IN-LAW.