temperance, had put his parishioners
on their guard against the use of this deleterious trash. Consequently,
very few of the Ballykeerin men, either in town or parish, would taste
it; when they stood in need of anything to quench their thirst, or
nourish them, they confined themselves to water, milk, or coffee.
Scarcely any one, therefore, with the exception of the knaves and
hypocrites, tampered with themselves by drinking it.

The crew whom Art went to meet on the night in question consisted of
about half a dozen, who, when they had been in the habit of drinking
whiskey, were hardened and unprincipled men--profligates in every
sense--fellows that, like Toal Finnigan, now adhered to teetotalism from
sordid motives only, or, in other words, because they thought they
could improve their business by it. It is true, they were suspected
and avoided by the honest teetotallers, who wondered very much that Art
Maguire, after the treatment he had formerly received at their hands,
should be mean enough, they said, ever "to be hail fellow well met" with
them again. But Art, alas! in spite of all his dignity of old blood, and
his rodomontade about the Fermanagh Maguires, was utterly deficient in
that decent pride which makes a man respect himself, and prevents him
from committing a mean action.

For a considerable time before his arrival, there were assembled in
Barney Scaddhan's tap, Tom Whiskey, Jerry Shannon, Jack Mooney, Toal
Finnigan, and the decoy duck, young Barney Scaddhan himself, who merely
became a teetotaller that he might be able to lure his brethren in to
spend their money in drinking cordial.

"I wondher Art's not here before now," observed Tom Whiskey; "blood
alive, didn't he get on well afther joinin' the 'totallers?"

"Faix, it's a miracle," replied Jerry Shannon, "there's not a more
'spbnsible man in Ballykeerin, he has quite a Protestant look;--ha, ha,
ha!"

"Divil a sich a pest ever this house had as the same Art when he was a
blackguard," said young Scaddhan; "there was no keepin' him out of it,
but constantly spungin' upon the dacent people that wor dhrmkin' in it."

"Many a good pound and penny he left you for all that, Barney, my lad,"
said Mooney; "and purty tratement you gave him when his money was gone."

"Ay, an' we'd give you the same," returned Scaddhan, "if your's was
gone, too; ha, ha, ha! it's not moneyless vagabones we want here."

"No," said Shannon, "you first make them moneyless vagabo