In Shadow of the Glen | Page 6

come back before I taste a drop at all? [Tramp gives him
the glass.]
DAN [After drinking.] Go over now to that cupboard, and bring me a
black stick you'll see in the west corner by the wall.
TRAMP [Taking a stick from the cupboard] Is it that?
DAN It is, stranger; it's a long time I'm keeping that stick for I've a bad
wife in the house.
TRAMP [With a queer look.] Is it herself, master of the house, and she
a grand woman to talk?
DAN It's herself, surely, it's a bad wife she is -- a bad wife for an old
man, and I'm getting old, God help me, though I've an arm to me still.

(He takes the stick in his hand.) Let you wait now a short while, and it's
a great sight you'll see in this room in two hours or three. (He stops to
listen.) Is that somebody above?
TRAMP [Listening.] There's a voice speaking on the path.
DAN Put that stick here in the bed and smooth the sheet the way it was
lying. (He covers himself up hastily.) Be falling to sleep now and don't
let on you know anything, or I'll be having your life. I wouldn't have
told you at all but it's destroyed with the drouth I was.
TRAMP [Covering his head.] Have no fear, master of the house. What
is it I know of the like of you that I'ld be saying a word or putting out
my hand to stay you at all? [He goes back to the fire, sits down on a
stool with his back to the bed and goes on stitching his coat.]
DAN [Under the sheet, querulously.] Stranger.
TRAMP [Quickly.] Whisht, whisht. Be quiet I'm telling you, they're
coming now at the door.
[Nora comes in with Micheal Dara, a tall, innocent young man behind
her.]
NORA I wasn't long at all, stranger, for I met himself on the path.
TRAMP You were middling long, lady of the house.
NORA There was no sign from himself?
TRAMP No sign at all, lady of the house.
NORA [To Micheal.] Go over now and pull down the sheet, and look
on himself, Micheal Dara, and you'll see it's the truth I'm telling you.
MICHEAL I will not, Nora, I do be afeard of the dead. [He sits down
on a stool next the table facing the tramp. Nora puts the kettle on a
lower hook of the pot-hooks, and piles turf under it.]
NORA [Turning to Tramp.] Will you drink a sup of tea with myself
and the young man, stranger, or (speaking more persuasively) will you
go into the little room and stretch yourself a short while on the bed, I'm
thinking it's destroyed you are walking the length of that way in the
great rain.
TRAMP Is it to go away and leave you, and you having a wake, lady of
the house? I will not surely. (He takes a drink from his glass which he
has beside him.) And it's none of your tea I'm asking either. [He goes
on stitching. Nora makes the tea.]
MICHEAL [After looking at the tramp rather scornfully for a moment.]
That's a poor coat you have, God help you, and I'm thinking it's a poor

tailor you are with it.
TRAMP If it's a poor tailor I am, I'm thinking it's a poor herd does be
running back and forward after a little handful of ewes the way I seen
yourself running this day, young fellow, and you coming from the fair.
[Nora comes back to the table.]
NORA [To Micheal in a low voice.] Let you not mind him at all,
Micheal Dara, he has a drop taken and it's soon he'll be falling asleep.
MICHEAL It's no lie he's telling, I was destroyed surely. They were
that wilful they were running off into one man's bit of oats, and another
man's bit of hay, and tumbling into the red bogs till it's more like a pack
of old goats than sheep they were. Mountain ewes is a queer breed,
Nora Burke, and I'm not used to them at all.
NORA [Settling the tea things.] There's no one can drive a mountain
ewe but the men do be reared in the Glen Malure, I've heard them say,
and above by Rathvanna, and the Glen Imaal, men the like of Patch
Darcy, God spare his soul, who would walk through five hundred sheep
and miss one of them, and he not reckoning them at all.
MICHEAL [Uneasily.] Is it the man went queer in his head the year
that's gone?
NORA It is surely.
TRAMP [Plaintively.] That was a great man, young fellow, a great man
I'm telling you. There was never a lamb from his own