In Shadow of the Glen | Page 6

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 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