“I’m shot to death! My lower limbs have no feeling in them!” was the exclamation of Mr. Powell when Williamson raised his head. Yet who it was that had killed him no one could tell. They were strangers, it was evident, but where they had come from was a dark, impenetrable mystery. Patrick Kildea, however, who was thought to resemble one of the shorter men, was arrested and tried, but finally acquitted, from lack of evidence to convict. This, for the time, was the end of that matter. ————●———— CHAPTER VIII. THE DETECTIVE SINGS, FIGHTS, AND DANCES HIMSELF INTO POPULARITY. The Sheridan House, Patrick Dormer, proprietor, situated in Centre Street, Pottsville, was somewhat celebrated in annals of the town, and its reputation among the inhabitants by no means doubtful or uncertain. While in some regards the tavern boasted entire respectability, in certain others it bore a name far from enviable. Its isolated honors were due to Mrs. Dormer; its many dishonors to her physically gigantic but morally erratic lord and master, and the calling he followed. Many were the drunken brawls and midnight orgies transpiring beneath its steep roof and within its tawny brick walls; but against the lady of the house nothing could be truthfully charged—except she was Dormer’s wife. The edifice was neither private residence nor hotel, but a compound of the two. Three stories in height, having a long, low extension in its rear, lighted by a skylight, and in which was located the well-patronized ten-pin alley; the basement of the main structure was employed as dining-room, kitchen, and laundry, and the first, or business floor, front, for saloon purposes. Just back of the latter was a card-playing and bagatelle division. Entering from the street, the first place to the southward, or right hand of the visitor, was the bar, the counter of which extended as far as the partition dividing the tap-room proper from the small parlor. In the last named apartment were stands and chairs for card-players, and the bagatelle table. From this sitting room admission was found to a gallery, or small balcony, overlooking the ball-alley and from which spectators might watch the progress of the game going on below. Leaving the same corridor, or hallway, a staircase led to the sleeping and other apartments of the second story. There were two approaches to the house from the street, one at the south and right hand, penetrating to the rooms above-stairs, without troubling people in the public places, and the other at the centre, reaching directly to the bar room. The latter was a capacious, comfortable affair, and the supply of drinkables in cut-glass decanters, and beer, ale, and porter on draught, always quite large, if not select as to quality and brand. The patronage extended to the saloon was miscellaneous, but apparently very profitable to the keeper.