“I think I understand what ye allude to! I shall be greatly obliged fur the letther! An’ as for the other matter, when I gets to Shenandoah, I can look to it. But what is it I see in the Boston _Pilot_ about the Bishop bein’ opposed to us? Wouldn’t it interfere wid me proper duties at the church?” “Oh, bother!” answered the landlord, “that’s very aisy! Ye lave the body a while—resign, ye see—an’ then ye are all right wid the praste. If ye wants to go back agin, who’s the wiser? Not the clergy, sure! But you know all about it! You are too old a head not to understand. An’ in Luzerne, I hear, the prastes are more’n half way favorable to us—be the same token, more will be afore many months! Oh, I can tell you, it’ll not do ye the laste harrum in the worruld, an’ it may do ye much good! Then, as ye are an ‘old one,’ we wants ye in the order, for it nades some such to put sinse in the fool-heads of the many new and spooney boys—an’ there’s plinty of them, an’ to spare!” McKenna promised, after some palaver, to think seriously on the subject. As the reader is aware—but as the Mollie Maguires were not aware—the detective was only too anxious to place himself within the pale of the order; yet, when the matter seemed so nigh accomplishment, he believed it best that he move slowly, and it would not do to exhibit too much anxiety. Great haste might spoil all and end in disappointment. In about a week’s time from the date of this conversation, armed with a complimentary letter from the landlord of the Sheridan House to Lawler, the operative started for Shenandoah. At that place, if anywhere in the mines, he made up his decision he would necessarily locate his headquarters. There, if at all, he must solve the mystery surrounding the Mollie Maguires. ————●———— CHAPTER X. FATHER BRIDGEMAN GIVES JACK KEHOE A BLAST. The night before the one on which McKenna had determined to take his departure from Pottsville, while in Dormer’s saloon, some words passed and a quarrel arose between the detective and a young person named Philip Nash, and the drunken desperado undertook the task, it seemed, of teaching the stranger some of the tenets of the Molly Maguires by actual demonstration. Whipping out his revolver, he made known his intention of finishing him just then and there, and, had not the operative been on the alert, and immediately covered Nash with his own weapon, it is more than probable that at least one career of usefulness in the mining region would have met with a speedy termination. As it transpired, Nash appreciated it was life for life, which was far from his sort of game, and he waited action until Dormer, with his powerful person, arrived and stood between them, when he quietly lowered and put away his pistol, McKenna following the example set, but taking especial care to have the protector within ready reach of his right hand.