rock the very first night, and he was reduced, for several days, to the expedient of trying a lead pencil. Subsequently, he used a newly-patented copying pencil, but had poor luck with it, as the nearly undecipherable reports he sent in abundantly testify. By employing a portable inkstand and filling it frequently out of Mrs. Cooney’s bluing bottle, which, happily for him, was left near the fire, in the kitchen, he managed to do better until an event occurred that rendered such a proceeding unnecessary. Cooney, who was no scholar, chanced to have a number of letters to send to Pottsville, and, learning that his new boarder, McKenna, could “use the pen iligantly”—as Lawler expressed it—he was pressed into the service, first having been sent to the nearest store for some ink. He took care to buy a middling-sized bottleful, and, after completing his task for Cooney, put it beside the bluing in the same place, and all he had to do when he needed to perform some work in his room, was to take away a quantity in his pocket stand and throw out what was left when he concluded his labors. Mrs. Cooney was particularly cautioned to keep the ink-bottle where it was, and, without asking any questions, complied. Thus was this trouble, for a time, wiped away. These details may seem trifling, but the emergency demanded great caution. It was at this time that McKenna formed the acquaintance of one Frank McAndrew. A friendship immediately sprung up between these two men that, nothwithstanding the trials and troubles through which both have passed—in fact, danger and adventure seemed to strengthen the feeling—remains, to this day, unimpaired and unshaken. McAndrew held true to McKenna in his darkest hour, through good and bad repute; and as he must play a conspicuous part in the course of this relation, some reference to his _personnel_ may prove of advantage to the reader. Of Celtic descent, McAndrew was twenty-eight or twenty-nine years of age, fair to look upon, of medium height, having round and well-proportioned limbs. His hair was of a lightish auburn, somewhat wavy, fine in texture and worn rather gracefully. He had a mustache of sandy hue, good teeth, blue eyes, regular features, and a complexion sometimes described as florid. His nose was rather long and sharp. Usually clad in good and decently-fashioned clothing, when out of his shifting suit, Frank was, if anything, generally more presentable than the usual run of men brought up to the calling of a miner. He was married and the father of two children. It was from McAndrew that McKenna, about the middle of February, heard that a man named Lanaham had been shot the preceding day at Centralia. The crime was by some charged upon the sheriff, or his assistants, and by others upon the chain-gang, but, as McAndrew remarked, “the Mollies would have to bear the blame, whether guilty or innocent.” The probability was that they had something to do with it.