Another thing which troubled him not a little was to obtain a constant supply of good ink. Several small bottles, which he procured and kept hidden in his room, froze solid, and the fluid was spoiled. The Lawler family was not literary. Its members made small use of pens, ink, and paper, and a fragment of red or white chalk employed upon a portion of the bar shelving, and well out of sight behind bottles and cigar-boxes, formed blotter, journal, cash-book, and ledger for Mike. His was a cash business, calling for no account-books. Ink was a superfluity in his house, the absence of which could well be pardoned. Both of the heads of that family believed firmly in meddling with writing as little as possible. But McKenna must have ink. Fortunately for him, Mrs. Lawler was an excellent laundress, and employed liquid bluing to give proper clearness to her husband’s linen. This coloring matter the detective frequently made use of, and there is abundant evidence in his reports, sometimes in the shape of blots and patches not necessary to the adornment of the sheet, that the landlady’s indigo bottle suffered considerably from the inroads made upon it by his busy steel pen. The latter instrument, in a common tin case, he easily managed to carry, with tobacco, keys, cartridges, bits of string and nails, in some of his convenient pockets. Many a time did he creep down the stairs and across the bar-room in his stocking feet, bearing his boots in his hand, of a cold winter night, light a tallow candle, or a miner’s lamp, and sit shivering by the kitchen table, with a miserably dim and uncertain flame, writing up his report, and consuming his substitute for ink, at Mrs. Lawler’s expense. On one or two occasions, in fact, he was reduced to the strait of commingling soot from the fire-place with water for writing purposes, when he had no pencil, the indigo vial was absent from its accustomed place, or the supply of fluid had given out. After completing the composition there came the enveloping and stamping. Diving into his corner in the old boot-leg, he would take out the amount required and carefully replace the remainder. Then, not daring to retain the dangerous missive over night in his possession, he must don his overcoat, and, by the illumination granted by the stars alone, wend his way to the post-office, where he could deposit his parcel in the outside box and no person be the wiser. Sometimes he had to return from these short nocturnal journeys completely saturated with falling rain, or having, in the darkness, stumbled into a ditch or mud-hole, his clothes would present a terribly soiled appearance when he could see them. To save himself trouble in answering unpleasant questions, he would, in such an event, kindle a fire in the cook-stove, dry and cleanse his garments, and then, before retiring, sit up and watch the embers until they expired, in order that Mrs. Lawler might find nothing to make inquiries about.