In a short time Dormer and McKenna took their leave, after promising to look in at the saloon again. As soon as outside Dormer began to inform his friend that a committee had been engaged in investigating his own case, the charge being that he, Dormer, was a member of an Odd Fellow’s lodge, but so far they had been unable to fix it upon him, and he did not believe they ever would. Dormer also explained that Dougherty had cast doubts upon McKenna’s genuineness, otherwise he would have been invited to take a seat with the Board. Of course he was not very friendly with Dougherty for his “impertinence,” as he worded it, and said he’d whip him, one of these days, if he was shoved out of the order. As long as he remained in it, he would not dare strike him a blow. McKenna said he forgave the Captain and wanted nothing farther done about it. While making for the Sheridan House, Dormer invited the operative to enter a saloon, and there introduced him to one Deenan, alias Bushy Deenan—called so from his plentiful crop of bristling, bushy hair and beard—where they met a number of old acquaintances and made some new ones. Deenan’s was another rendezvous for the Mollies in Pottsville. Not remaining there long, the two once more started for Dormer’s house. Arriving there, the landlord and McKenna had the bar to themselves; and sitting in a comfortable chair, and stretching out his huge limbs before the glowing stove, Dormer commented upon one they had just parted from. “That man, Deenan, is a miserable hypocrite! I hev my own opinion of the likes of him! They hev little good in them—barrin’ the big talk—an’ that puts no whisky in the can. He’s all smooth and straight while forninst ye, but when out of sight he’s worse nor a rattlesnake. More nor that, he has no backbone in him! When the trying time comes you don’t find him there! He’ll wag his jaw till all’s blue, but divil a bit of fight is there in him! For instance: Last fall, early, when there was considerable excitement among the miners, a fellow was to be beaten, for some reason known to the byes who axed it to be done, in a township not far from this, beyant the mountain, an’ the job fell on my nephew, Jim O’Reilly, an’ Bushy Deenan. Well, I furnished all the money needful, and O’Reilly, tho’ but a broth of a boy, was all ready, cocked and primed, to start for the place, when what should Deenan do but crawl squarely out, like a cur, an’ say he’d have nothing to do with it! Faith, he flew the track enthirely! Phat sort of a fellow would ye be afther callin’ that in the ould counthry?” “Nothin’ more nor less than a craven coward! An’ they’d expel him forever! I’d sooner be a rat nor such a man!” “You’re perfectly right!” said Dormer, grinning like the ogre in the fairy tale. “I know you wouldn’t act that way! The McKennas, in my part of the country, were always a bould set, an’ honest to the heart’s core!” Swallowing this dose of blarney with as good a grace as possible, McKenna asserted: