But
he refused him a gallon of oats for his horse.

It was not at once that the old man gave way. He went on boycotting
individuals till he hadn't a pair of breeches left to sit upon, and
the non-boycotted tradesmen of the little towns around declined to
sit upon his car, because the poor horse, fed upon roadside grasses,
refused to be urged into a trot. "Tare and ages, man, what's the good
of it? Ain't we a-cutting the noses off our own faces, and that with
the money so scarce that I haven't seen the sight of a half-crown
this two weeks." It was thus that he declared his purpose of going
back to the common unpatriotic ways of mankind, to an old pal, whom
he had known all his days. He did do so, but found, alas! that his
trade had perished in the meanwhile or forced itself into other
channels.

The result was that Teddy Mooney became very bitter in spirit, and
was for a while an Orangeman, and almost a Protestant. The evil
things that had been done to him were terrible to his spirit. He had
been threatened with eviction from ten acres of ground because he
couldn't pay his rent; or, as he said, because he had declined to
drive a maid-servant to the house of another gentleman who was also
boycotted. This had not been true, but it had served to embitter
Teddy Mooney. And now, at last, he had determined to belong to the
other side.

When an Irishman does make up his mind to serve the other side he
is very much determined. There is but the meditation of two minutes
between Landleaguing and Orangeism, between boycotting landlords and
thorough devotion to the dear old landlord. When Kit Mooney had first
laid down the law to his father, how he ought to assist in boycotting
all the enemies of the Landleague, no one saw his way clearer than
did Teddy Mooney. "I wouldn't mind doing without a bit or a sup,"
he said, when his son explained to him that he might have to suffer
a little for the cause. "Not a bit or a sup when the ould counthry
wants it." He had since had a few words with his son Kit, and was
now quite on the other side of the question. He was told that
somebody had threatened to cut off his old mare's tail because he
had driven Phil D'Arcy. Since that he had become a martyr as well as
an Orangeman, and was disposed to go any length "for the gintl'men."
This had come all about by degrees--had been coming about since poor
Florian's murder; and at last he wrote a letter to Yorke Clayton, or
got someone else to write