The Landleaguers

by Anthony Trollope

"He is doing quite wrong," said Ada.

"And now what are we to do about his breakfast? Papa says that he is not to be allowed to come into the room, and papa means it. You and I will have to breakfast with him and dine with him, first one and then the other."

"But papa will miss us."

"We must go through the ceremony of a second breakfast and a second dinner." This was the beginning of Edith's scheme. "Of course it's a bore; all things are bores. This about the flood is the most terrible bore I ever knew. But I'm not going to let Flory go to the devil without making an effort to save him. It would be going to the devil, if he were left alone in his present position."

"Papa will see that we don't eat anything."

"Of course he must be told. There never ought to be any secrets in anything. Of course he'll grow used to it, and won't expect us to sit there always and eat nothing. He thinks he's right, and perhaps he is. Flory will feel the weight of his displeasure; and if we talk to him we may persuade him."

This state of things at Morony Castle was allowed to go on with few other words said upon the subject. The father became more and more gloomy, as the floods held their own upon the broad meadows. Pat Carroll had been before the magistrates at Headford, and had been discharged, as all evidence was lacking to connect him with the occurrence. Further effort none was made, and Pat Carroll went on in his course, swearing that not a shilling of rent should be paid by him in next March. "The floods had done him a great injury," he said laughingly among his companions, "so that it was unreasonable to expect that he should pay." It was true he had owed a half-year's rent last November; but then it had become customary with Mr. Jones's tenants to be allowed the indulgence of six months. No more at any rate would be said about rent till March should come.

And now, superinduced upon this cause of misery, had come the tidings which had been spread everywhere through the county in regard to the Galway hunt. Tom Daly had gone on regularly with his meets, and had not indeed been stopped everywhere. His heart had been gladdened by a wonderful run which he had had from Carnlough. The people had not interfered there, and the day had been altogether propitious. Tom had for the moment been in high good humour; but the interruption had come again, and had been so repeated as to make him feel that his occupation was in truth gone. The gentry of the county had then held a meeting at Ballinasloe, and had decided that the hounds should be withdrawn for the remainder of the season. No one who has not ridden with the hounds regularly can understand the effect of such an order. There was no old woman with a turkey in her possession who did not feel herself thereby entitled to destroy the fox who came lurking about her poultry-yard. Nor was there a gentleman who owned a pheasant who did not feel himself animated in some degree by the same feeling. "As there's to be an end of fox-hunting in County Galway, we can do what we like with our own coverts." "I shall go in for shooting," Sir Nicholas Bodkin had been heard to say.

But Black Tom Daly sat alone gloomily in his room at Ahaseragh, where it suited him still to be present and look after the hounds, and told himself that the occupation of his life was gone. Who would want to buy a horse even, now that the chief object for horses was at an end?