And the Jones family finds itself the victim of a boycott, a term that had only come into use two years earlier when Captain Charles Boycott, land agent of an absentee landlord in County Mayo in Ireland, had attempted to evict eleven tenants who refused to pay their full rent. Charles Parnell, the champion of Irish nationalism and a land reform agitator, had already recommended that an offending landowner might be ostracized. Captain Boycott then found himself victim of the process that later bore his name. And in _The Landleaguers_ all the servants but one leave the Jones household. The family is unable to buy anything in town, and no one in the town will buy from the farm. The daughters come to enjoy, in a way, household duties such as cooking, making beds, and churning butter. The family, though, is devastated. And the women pay a surcharge. As we see Mr. Jones carving the mutton and serving a male visitor first, the author explains: "In a boycotted house you will always find that the gentlemen are helped before the ladies. It is a part of the principle of boycotting that women shall subject themselves." As the nonviolent civil disobedience changes to murder, the story takes on the dimensions of a western movie when the heralded lawman comes to town to institute law and order and set things straight. This was Captain Yorke Clayton, possessed of two attributes that would lead any man to fame: recklessness and light blue eyes. With these attributes he wins the hearts of both Jones sisters, Ada and Edith. Edith, the younger and brighter of the two, tells herself and everyone else that he will prefer Ada, the elder and the more beautiful. By the time he declares himself to be in love with Edith, she has such a difficult time getting rid of her story that the issue is not resolved within forty-eight chapters. After Florian is killed, Captain Clayton becomes obsessed with the identification of his killer. The villain is assumed to be Terry Lax, an agitator from another county who is guilty of murdering the other witness who was prepared to identify the opener of the sluice gate. This was done in a crowded courtroom with the pistol at the victim's head, and no one could be found who would say he had seen who did it. The author did not live to unravel the murder for us and wrap up all the loose ends; we are assured by Trollope's son Harry, however, that the Captain did marry Edith and that the infamous Mr. Lax was hanged by the neck until he was dead.