NORA. And it’s destroyed he’ll be going till dark night, and he after eating nothing since the sun went up.
CATHLEEN. _Turning the cake out of the oven._—It’s destroyed he’ll be, surely. There’s no sense left on any person in a house where an old woman will be talking for ever.
CATHLEEN. _Cutting off some of the bread and rolling it in a cloth; to Maurya._—Let you go down now to the spring well and give him this and he passing. You’ll see him then and the dark word will be broken, and you can say “God speed you,” the way he’ll be easy in his mind.
MAURYA. _Taking the bread._—Will I be in it as soon as himself?
MAURYA. _Standing up unsteadily._—It’s hard set I am to walk.
CATHLEEN. _Looking at her anxiously._—Give her the stick, Nora, or maybe she’ll slip on the big stones.
CATHLEEN. The stick Michael brought from Connemara.
MAURYA. _Taking a stick Nora gives her._—In the big world the old people do be leaving things after them for their sons and children, but in this place it is the young men do be leaving things behind for them that do be old.
[_She goes out slowly. Nora goes over to the ladder._]
CATHLEEN. Wait, Nora, maybe she’d turn back quickly. She’s that sorry, God help her, you wouldn’t know the thing she’d do.
CATHLEEN. _Looking out._—She’s gone now. Throw it down quickly, for the Lord knows when she’ll be out of it again.
NORA. _Getting the bundle from the loft._—The young priest said he’d be passing to-morrow, and we might go down and speak to him below if it’s Michael’s they are surely.
CATHLEEN. _Taking the bundle._—Did he say what way they were found?
NORA. _Coming down._—“There were two men,” says he, “and they rowing round with poteen before the cocks crowed, and the oar of one of them caught the body, and they passing the black cliffs of the north.”
CATHLEEN. _Trying to open the bundle._—Give me a knife, Nora, the string’s perished with the salt water, and there’s a black knot on it you wouldn’t loosen in a week.
NORA. _Giving her a knife._—I’ve heard tell it was a long way to Donegal.
CATHLEEN. _Cutting the string._—It is surely. There was a man in here a while ago—the man sold us that knife—and he said if you set off walking from the rocks beyond, it would be seven days you’d be in Donegal.