saved them $200 and brought them heavy crops. They organized. They needed a
store. Up in a rocky boreen on his little farm, Paddy had an empty shed.
Again the neighbors explored the toes of their money stockings, and found
enough to pay for filling the shed with flour, tea, sugar and meal. Then,
if they were "free" men, they came boldly to shop on the nights the store
was open--moonlight or no moonlight. But if they were "tied" men, they
crept fearsomely tip the rocks on dark nights only. The recruits recruited.
Financial and social returns began to come in. At the end of the first year
there was a clear profit of over $500. In three years the society was
recognized as one of the most efficient in Ireland and presented by the
Pembroke fund with a fine stucco hall. Jigs. Dances. Lectures.

But the gombeen man wasn't "taking it lying down." He called on his
political and religious friends to aid. First on the magistrate. When Paddy
became the political rival of the gombeen man for the county council, there
was a joint debate. Paddy used reduced prices as his argument. Questions
were hurled at him by the reddening trader.

"Wait till I get through," said Paddy. "Then I'll attend to you."

That, said the trader, was a physical threat! So the gombeener's friend,
the magistrate, threw Paddy into jail. Paddy went to prison full of fear
that dissension might be sown in the society's ranks. But on coming out he
discovered not only that he had won the election but that a committee was
waiting to present him with a gorgeous French gilt clock, and that fires,
just as on St. John's eve, were blazing on the mountains.

But the trader took another friend of his aside. This time it was the
village priest. Bad dances, he said, were going on of nights in Templecrone
hall. What was Paddy's surprise on a Sunday in the windswept chapel by the