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rainfall days before. Hats aplenty tipped to me as I tapped my way along, for I have a good report among my fellows. As I chanced by, Mrs. Wesendonck applied for assistance in locating her cat, implying it had been carried off by the Rebels, and she was not pleased when I explained that the federal government don’t pursue stray animals. But then she is a German, and they are a stubborn folk. Mr. Yuengling’s brewery wagons churned the length of the street, hauling sin in barrels, and the clang of unseen railyards sang of profits. The smoke from the Palo Alto mills and from our brace of ironworks invaded the sky, which was hard and blue and cold. A ragamuffin boy cried to his comrades, “Aw, ga wan wit cha! Youz don’ know nuttin’, yuz don’t,” warming me with the melodious speech of the native-born Pottsvillean.
    Mr. Gowen was in his office, indeed, which had a fine location at the hub of things, just along from the Pennsylvania Hall Hotel, our city’s finest, and across the street from the offices ofMr. Bannon’s Miners’ Journal, the newspaper of Mr. Lincoln’s party and the one we took at home.
    I had barely uttered my business to Mr. Gowen’s clerk, who looked as though he suffered from obstinate bowels, when the door to Mr. Gowen’s office opened and two fellows come galloping out. I recognized Mr. Heckscher, the great colliery owner. He was companioned by a foreigner. And when I put it thus, it tells you something, for we have all the nations of the world, or thereabouts, in Schuylkill County. At least all those which are civilized. When a fellow looks foreign in Pottsville, he strikes you queer.
    This one had a narrow face, like an axe-head viewed straight on, and dainty little mustaches, flat as if painted. His waistcoat and tie flashed silken hues from east of the English Channel. He looked a grand sort, though not an especially good one.
    “Ah, Monsieur,” he said to Mr. Heckscher, who did not note my greeting, “the method . . . it is not important, you understand. Only that the thing has been done at last. C’est vrai? ”
    Now, you will say: “That fellow was a Frenchman.” But I will tell you: The devil spoke French, and English, too, but neither had been the first tongue that come to his cradle. His English pronunciation was too fine, and his French intonation was insufficiently rude. I could not begin to make the stranger out.
    I let the matter go past me, for I had more important things on my mind than dandified Europeans and their commerce. I thought instead of Heckschersville, where I had spent a muchness of the night. And where a dead and nameless girl lay buried. Where a general had been killed. The mining patch had Mr. Heckscher’s name, but he was too wise and rich to live in it. Rich men lived in Pottsville. Or in Reading, or Philadelphia. The patches were home to the poor, and to foremen and superintendents who slept with loaded pistols by their beds. Heckschersville was known as the worst and most commotive settlement in wild Cass Township, where even the mice were Irish and Union blue found less of a welcome than famine. But it sat atop one of the richest veins of anthracite in thecounty. The Irish may have hated the man, but they made Mr. Heckscher a fortune.
    Of course, I did not connect the presence of Mr. Heckscher and his odd companion to my own doings, for coal bosses are uncommonly fond of barristers. They spend more time in chambers than in collieries, and what they cannot take with a pickaxe, they take with a judge’s writ. I do not speak of Mr. Evans, my dear wife’s uncle and my employer before the war, who ran a model establishment near equal in its qualities to the works of Mr. Johns of Saint Clair town. Mr. Evans it was who invited my bride and myself to come to America, when we were newly married but unlucky, with my Indian disgrace hanging over my head.
    I always thought Mr. Evans a good man, and a just one. He paid fair wages and measured with honest scales.