Cotton (stiffened by Mrs. Cotton) said that to enter
a hustings for a Home Ruler, of any variety, would be for him an
unauthorised bowing down in the House of Rimmon, a simile that
conveyed little to Larry, and nothing at all, allegorically, to his
agent, Barty Mangan, though its practical interpretation presented no
difficulties to either of them.

The Reverend Mr. Armstrong, Pastor of the Methodists, admitted to a
preference for an "All-for-Irelander," as opposed to an Official
Nationalist; but evaded the responsibility of a promise by saying that
he would lay the matter before the Lord, and would write later.

Neither did young Mr. Coppinger receive much encouragement from his
own class. Bill Kirby, indeed, undertook to support him and even
volunteered to go round with him on his canvassing expeditions, but
this was considered by Larry's Committee as being of questionable
advantage, even, possibly, affording to the enemy an occasion to
blaspheme, and the offer (made, it may be said, at Judith's
instigation) was declined.

Nor, as a matter of fact, was Larry himself disposed to take Bill
Kirby's proffered hand. He told himself that he was done with that
lot. He was bitterly angry with Christian. He said to himself that he
would never forgive her; would never, if he could help it, see one of
them again. At a word from her father she had chucked him; without a
moment of hesitation, without a word to show that she was even sorry
for her father's treatment of him. "Apparently it's the only thing to
do!" she had said. That was all she thought of keeping a promise! What
about leaving father and mother and sticking to your husband, he would
like to know! These Protestants who talked such a lot about reading
the Bible! It was quite true what old Mangan had said: "When all comes
to all, a man must stick to his own Church!" All these others, these
St. Georges, and Westropps, and old Ardmore, and the rest of them, had
only been waiting to jump on him as soon as he put a foot out of the
rut they all walked in. They had waited for the chance to make him a
pariah. Now they had it. All right! He could face that. They should
soon see how little he thought of them!

He pitched himself headlong into the contest. The weather had fallen
from grace. October, having been borne in on the wings of a gale, was
storming on through wind and wet, and the game of canvassing, that had
seemed, on that sunny day when he had written to Christian,