when they struck
the lead or tapped a pocket. He had had slack seasons before now, and
things had always come right again. This made it hard for him to
explain the present prolonged spell of dullness.

That there was something more than ordinarily wrong first dawned on him
during the stock-taking in summer. Hempel and he were constantly coming
upon goods that had been too long on hand, and were now fit only to be
thrown away. Half-a-dozen boxes of currants showed a respectable growth
of mould; a like fate had come upon some flitches of bacon; and not a
bag of flour but had developed a species of minute maggot. Rats had got
at his coils of rope, one of which, sold in all good faith, had gone
near causing the death of the digger who used it. The remains of some
smoked fish were brought back and flung at his head with a shower of
curses, by a woman who had fallen ill through eating of it. And yet, in
spite of the replenishing this involved, the order he sent to town that
season was the smallest he had ever given. For the first time he could
not fill a dray, but had to share one with a greenhorn, who, if you
please, was setting up at his very door.

He and Hempel cracked their brains to account for the falling-off--or
at least he did: afterwards he believed Hempel had suspected the truth
and been too mealy-mouthed to speak out. It was Polly who
innocently--for of course he did not draw her into confidence--Polly
supplied the clue from a piece of gossip brought to the house by the
woman Hemmerde. It appeared that, at the time of the rebellion,
Mahony's open antagonism to the Reform League had given offence all
round--to the extremists as well as to the more wary on whose behalf
the League was drafted. They now got even with him by taking their
custom elsewhere. He snorted with indignation on hearing of it; then
laughed ironically. He was expected, was he, not only to bring his
personal tastes and habits into line with those of the majority, but to
deny his politics as well? And if he refused, they would make it hard
for him to earn a decent living in their midst. Nothing seemed easier
to these unprincipled democrats than for a man to cut his coat to suit
his job. Why, he might just as well turn Whig and be done with it!

He sat over his account-books. The pages were black with bad debts for
"tucker." Here however was no mystery. The owners of these names--Purdy
was among them--had without doubt been implicated in the Eure