SHUKRA. Kanada, thou,--[_a pause, very brief but poignant_]. Why this agitation? Shanta, where is Shanta?
SHUKRA [_seeing the other torches rising suddenly_]. Speak! Who comes hither?
SHUKRA. Who is he? [_As a premonition of the truth comes over him._] Where is Shanta?
KANADA [_blurts out_]. At the foot of the hill the lightning struck him.
SHUKRA [_with a terrible cry_]. Shanta,--my Shanta! [_Two men carrying torches with one hand, and dragging something white with the other, come up the steps. This vision silences Shukra. A pause follows. Another torch is seen rising behind them._]
SHUKRA [_slowly_], Shanta,--gone. [_Pause again, looking into the starry heavens._] This is the Judgment of Indra!
Copyright, 1909, by Lady Gregory. All rights reserved.
MICHAEL MISKELL } [_Paupers_]. MIKE MCINERNEY } MRS. DONOHOE [_a Countrywoman_].
Reprinted from "Seven Short Plays," by Lady Gregory, published by G. P. Putnam's Sons, by permission of Lady Gregory and Messrs. G. P. Putnam's Sons.
All acting rights, both professional and amateur, are reserved in the United States, Great Britain, and all countries of the Copyright Union, by the author. Performances forbidden and right of presentation reserved.
Application for the right of performing this play or reading it in public should be made to Samuel French, 28 West 38th Street, New York City, or 26 South Hampton Street, Strand, London.
[SCENE: _A ward in Cloon Workhouse. The two old men in their beds_.]
MICHAEL MISKELL. Isn't it a hard case, Mike McInerney, myself and yourself to be left here in the bed, and it the feast day of Saint Colman, and the rest of the ward attending on the Mass.
MIKE MCINERNEY. Is it sitting up by the hearth you are wishful to be, Michael Miskell, with cold in the shoulders and with speckled shins? Let you rise up so, and you well able to do it, not like myself that has pains the same as tin-tacks within in my inside.
MICHAEL MISKELL. If you have pains within in your inside there is no one can see it or know of it the way they can see my own knees that are swelled up with the rheumatism, and my hands that are twisted in ridges the same as an old cabbage stalk. It is easy to be talking about soreness and about pains, and they maybe not to be in it at all.