In Shadow of the Glen | Page 7

ewes he wouldn't
know before it was marked, and he'ld run from this to the city of
Dublin and never catch for his breath.
NORA [Turning round quickly.] He was a great man surely, stranger,
and isn't it a grand thing when you hear a living man saying a good
word of a dead man, and he mad dying?
TRAMP It's the truth I'm saying, God spare his soul.
[He puts the needle under the collar of his coat, and settles himself to
sleep in the chimney-corner. Nora sits down at the table; their backs are
turned to the bed.]
MICHEAL [Looking at her with a queer look.] I heard tell this day,
Nora Burke, that it was on the path below Patch Darcy would be
passing up and passing down, and I heard them say he'ld never past it
night or morning without speaking with yourself.
NORA [In a low voice.] It was no lie you heard, Micheal Dara.
MICHEAL I'm thinking it's a power of men you're after knowing if it's

in a lonesome place you live itself.
NORA [Giving him his tea.] It's in a lonesome place you do have to be
talking with some one, and looking for some one, in the evening of the
day, and if it's a power of men I'm after knowing they were fine men,
for I was a hard child to please, and a hard girl to please (she looks at
him a little sternly), and it's a hard woman I am to please this day,
Micheal Dara, and it's no lie I'm telling you.
MICHEAL [Looking over to see that the tramp is asleep, and then
pointing to the dead man.] Was it a hard woman to please you were
when you took himself for your man?
NORA What way would I live and I an old woman if I didn't marry a
man with a bit of a farm, and cows on it, and sheep on the back hills?
MICHEAL [Considering.] That's true, Nora, and maybe it's no fool you
were, for there's good grazing on it, if it is a lonesome place, and I'm
thinking it's a good sum he's left behind.
NORA [Taking the stocking with money from her pocket, and putting
it on the table.] I do be thinking in the long nights it was a big fool I
was that time, Micheal Dara, for what good is a bit of a farm with cows
on it, and sheep on the back hills, when you do be sitting looking out
from a door the like of that door, and seeing nothing but the mists
rolling down the bog, and the mists again, and they rolling up the bog,
and hearing nothing but the wind crying out in the bits of broken trees
were left from the great storm, and the streams roaring with the rain.
MICHEAL [Looking at her uneasily.] What is it ails you, this night,
Nora Burke? I've heard tell it's the like of that talk you do hear from
men, and they after being a great while on the back hills.
NORA [Putting out the money on the table.] It's a bad night, and a wild
night, Micheal Dara, and isn't it a great while I am at the foot of the
back hills, sitting up here boiling food for himself, and food for the
brood sow, and baking a cake when the night falls? (She puts up the
money, listlessly, in little piles on the table.) Isn't it a long while I am
sitting here in the winter and the summer, and the fine spring, with the
young growing behind me and the old passing, saying to myself one
time, to look on Mary Brien who wasn't that height (holding out her
hand), and I a fine girl growing up, and there she is now with two
children, and another coming on her in three months or four. [She
pauses.]

MICHEAL [Moving over three of the piles.] That's three pounds we
have now, Nora Burke.
NORA [Continuing in the same voice.] And saying to myself another
time, to look on Peggy Cavanagh, who had the lightest hand at milking
a cow that wouldn't be easy, or turning a cake, and there she is now
walking round on the roads, or sitting in a dirty old house, with no teeth
in her mouth, and no sense and no more hair than you'ld see on a bit of
a hill and they after burning the furze from it.
MICHEAL That's five pounds and ten notes, a good sum, surely! . . .
It's not that way you'll be talking when you marry a young man, Nora
Burke, and they were saying in the fair my lambs were the best lambs,
and I got a grand