Against the decaying background of Ballycloran, the precarious position of Larry Macdermot and his children Thady and Feemy emerges as mounting debts, mortgages, and unpaid rents threaten the family estate, while Thady struggles to manage impoverished tenants and hostile creditors and Captain Myles Ussher, an unpopular officer involved in suppressing illicit distilling, begins a dangerous courtship of Feemy that introduces a new source of tension into the already troubled household. Father John grows increasingly concerned that Ussher may have no serious intention of marrying Feemy and warns both her and Thady, yet Feemy remains devoted to her lover while Thady, frustrated by poverty, landlords, and the treatment of the tenants, becomes increasingly entangled with Pat Brady and the world of clandestine resistance, allowing the family’s financial decline, Feemy’s romance, and Thady’s growing political danger to converge.