Lawler informed his friend that he would do all he could to secure employment for him in the mines, but, should he succeed, the wages would be low, at the highest not above ten dollars a week, and the labor severe. He must naturally begin at the bottom round of the ladder, and gradually, if at all, rise in the scale to the rating of a miner. It required time and hard work to reach that position. The place of “butty,” or helper, even, was not so very easy of acquirement. McKenna here put forward the idea that he was accustomed to manual labor—which was not exactly the truth, though, in the old country, he once worked on a farm, and had his muscles hardened by considerable out-door exercise. Some years had elapsed, however, since his hands were employed in real toil and he had earned his bread by the sweat of his brow. Still, he expressed his willingness to try, and said that he would accept anything yielding him a decent compensation, his principal object being—as Lawler had doubtless been informed by Dormer—to remain _perdu_, out of sight and quiet like, until certain people should lose all trace of him. He believed, he told Lawler, in a whisper intended to impress the hearer that there was a mystery surrounding him, that the depths of a slope and a miner’s attire, with the grime and dust incident to delving in a colliery, would about as effectually cover him from the pursuit of those so anxious to come up with him, as anything in the way of disguise he could wear, or any calling he could engage in. Muff coincided in this opinion. Lawler’s residence, in which the detective was making himself quite at home, was and is a respectable but unpretentious wooden structure, painted outside of a brown color, and two stories in height above a low basement. In the front part of the first floor was the usual bar-room, the counter extending across the northern side of the apartment. Behind the counter were exhibited the commonest saloon fixtures, glasses, decanters, bottles, etc. At one end of the eastern side was a door, opening into the kitchen, employed also as a dining-room, from which latter apartment extended a staircase reaching to the upper story. On the second floor there were but two partitions, forming three compartments. In the rear of these were two beds, for the elder children. In the middle room was one double bed. In the front room, much more spacious and better furnished than the rest, was the couch occupied by Mr. and Mrs. Lawler. There were also the usual bureaus, tables, chairs, and other furniture of similar habitations, with a stove, sofa, rocking-chair, mirrors, and pictures. It was far from a bare and unsightly place of abode. Rather the contrary, and showing, in the neatness and order prevailing, that Mrs. Lawler was a good and careful housekeeper. It was, in fact, the best room in the house.