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bother to look at it. He merely weighed it in his palm, as if he liked to feel time in his grip. Gold it was, although the fellow had debts. “As the district attorney for the county of Schuylkill, I demand an explanation. I demand it, Jones!”
    “Now, now, Mr. Gowen,” I told him. “There is no need for commotion. An explanation you will have, see. If only you will—”
    “Don’t play the little Welsh fool with me, Jones. I can see right through you.” He shook his head with unnecessary bitterness. “You won’t fool me twice.”
    He folded his arms. They settled atop a stomach that hinted prosperity. Yet, despite his rising prospects, prosperity was a quality young Mr. Gowen did not yet possess. If he knew me, I knew him, too, our fresh-made district attorney. Hardly a weekin office he was, and as full of himself as young men are apt to be. But failed coal ventures had bankrupted him, and he lived at the mercy of creditors. Secrets will not be hid in our dear Pottsville. Young Gowen was full of dreams, but out of funds. Of course, his political victory would extend his credit handsomely, for power is as good as ready money.
    “Oh, I know who you work for,” he insisted, although it would emerge that he did not. “Don’t think I don’t. I know what goes on in Harrisburg. In Washington, too. You Republicans aren’t the only people with a party organization.”
    He wore his collar too tight, as stout men will. The pink of his neck climbed into his face, like mercury in a thermometer, and his heavy mustaches quivered. “Boss McClure should know better. If he has Seward’s ear, he damned well should know enough to tell him we don’t need any more federal interference. Too much harm done already. Schuylkill County can manage its own affairs.”
    He calmed a bit and settled against the windowsill of his office, spreading his generous bottom along the ledge. Behind him I saw an earthen yard and the necessary closet. “Just let me handle things, Jones. I know these people, the Irish. Let me handle things and there won’t be any repetition of that business with the trainload of recruits. No need for that sort of thing at all. Trouble for everybody.” He weighed his watch again, without reading the dial. “As for murdered young women, no such thing, man! There hasn’t been so much as a girl reported missing these last months.” He ventured his first smile since I broached my business. “Had there been, I suspect it would have made a lively campaign issue. The Irish are very protective of their ladies.”
    I considered the great, big bulk of him, in his vigor and his pride. His dark suit fit him to a fancy, yet somehow seemed too small to contain his fullness. There was nothing still about him and, despite his business reverses, we all sensed that Franklin Benjamin Gowen was a fellow with a future. I will give him that. He was but twenty-six or twenty-seven then, handsome andalready a good doer at table. Rumored to have great plans he was, although few of us were sure of his direction. An Orangeman by ancestry, he attended the Episcopal Church that stood near his office. Twas the proper church for those with high ambitions, and the best address in town, although I am content to go to chapel.
    And yet, for all his high-church ways, Mr. Gowen had chosen to represent the Copperhead Democrats, and the Breckinridge faction, at that. He drew his ballots from Irish Catholic miners, from German farmers unhappy with the war. He had that Irish gift of talk, when he did not speak in anger, but hard it was to pin down what he said. Later, of course, he would make a great career, as all the nation knows, building the Reading Railroad to a spectacular bankruptcy. He was the man who hanged the Mollie Maguires, the guilty and the innocent alike, and I would play a role in that sad travesty.
    We could not have foreseen his future during the war, since young Gowen seemed committed to the Irish. But he would be the one to lay