While insinuating himself into a new town, or community, McKenna properly adopted widely differing devices, but an extended experience instructed him that the best course to pursue, in any given case of the sort, was the one appearing the most natural. It was a cardinal principle, impressed upon his mind, never to make open and direct inquiries regarding people and things of which he was really in search—a place for permanent employment was, as the reader has all along understood, merely a cover for his actual purpose in visiting the coal country. In fact, unless it brought him in close contact with the right men, and revealed to him hidden things, in no other way attainable, a chance for himself to dig in the mines might, for the present, be deferred. It would be well, he believed, after a while, to divert attention from his real occupation. But to look up a job was a good excuse for much traveling, over a large field, with the topography of which he was required to become accurately familiar. Private objects he left to be worked out in a private way, occasionally giving them a slight and unremarked start, or direction, as he went from place to place. Night was his favorite time for accomplishing progress. Then his friends were generally relieved from labor and gathered where they could be reached. He sauntered unconcernedly about, after darkness had set in, and if he heard a row, or “bit of a shindy” going on in a drinking place, would enter and make himself in some manner companionable with the persons within—excepting they chanced to be of the character of Mr. Staub, the portly landlord at Port Clinton, who proved so inhospitable, mistaking the agent for a thief—and in that event he usually caused himself to become invisible as rapidly as possible. With an assumption of unlimited assurance, and pretending to be more than half way under the influence of liquor, other conditions being favorable, he broke out with such a roaring, rollicking ditty as he supposed might please those about him, or, if he felt in the mood, began a spirited Irish jig, performed with much agility and many comical contortions of countenance and body, to the measure of no music at all, excepting he chose to whistle a tune meanwhile. In the course of a little time, the out-door training, and the exercise in singing and dancing, made him quite an expert, and his fame preceded him from Schuylkillhaven to Summit, and, as he learned from his companions, had journeyed even as far as Pottsville. At any rate, he never failed, with those in whose company he cared, for the purposes of his undertaking, to be received, in immediately placing himself upon a secure and friendly footing. The climax of miner’s friendship was usually reached by asking the persons present to come to the bar and indulge in something to drink, if it was to be had, at his expense; otherwise, the invitation emanated from some one of the company and included the stranger. Either result was equally