From this significant remark the detective inferred that, as he had all along intended he should, Dormer had given a hint to Lawler that the stranger was a hard case generally, and engaged in concealing himself from certain officials in Western New York, who were in search of him for having killed a man in Buffalo a year or so before. It was more than probable that his reputation as a dealer in counterfeit money had also been discussed by the same worthies. “I’ll accept your offer wid pleasure,” answered McKenna, “an’ I think it’ll not be many days before you’ll see me face in Shenandoah! I believe it’ll be just the place for me!” The detective and Dormer attended Lawler to the cars and bid him good luck on his journey. After Lawler’s departure time hung rather heavily upon the agent’s hands. He had nothing particular to attend to that was of importance in his calling, excepting to make the acquaintance of as many Mollies as possible, impress on the mind of Dormer the necessity of covering his tracks from the New York detectives, and secure the names of such persons as would be likely to listen to propositions connected with his counterfeit currency schemes. He pretended that he might soon have a supply to be disposed of. Dormer would sit for hours in his chair, when customers were not plentiful, and drink in, with open eyes and gaping mouth, the wonderful tales the detective related of his strange adventures in foreign lands, the different people seen, and the narrow escapes he had made from capture and drowning while in the naval service. The little trouble experienced with another man in Buffalo, in which his antagonist chanced to be killed, was often repeated, with such embellishments as his inventive genius supplied. Once in a while he would exhibit a genuine bank-bill and tax Dormer’s acuteness of vision to the utmost in finding out the difference between it and those he knew to be genuine issues of the same bank. He was hardly able to distinguish the peculiar secret mark which, McKenna sagely told him, “spotted the ‘flimsy’ as of the sort called ‘queer.’” That it was spurious, however, was evident, from the fact that the exhibitor _said_ he could “sell any needed quantity of similar banknotes at the exceedingly low rate of forty cents on the dollar.” His word was not to be doubted. “For the life of me, I can’t see why it is not of the genuine issue!” Dormer would remark, with a puzzled look on his naturally sardonical face. “I’m no _bocaun_, as you’re aware, but may I niver die till I see me own funeral, if the wan bill isn’t every bit as good, to me, as t’other!” “Faith, an’ wan is jist as good as the other,” McKenna would reply, _sotto voce_, “for two thirds of all them bills is as false as Sam’s masther—the devil—but don’t say a word about it! As long as the paple don’t know the truth, where’s the difference?”