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 Michael 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 Michael). Go over now and pull down the sheet, and look on himself, Michael Dara, and you’ll see it’s the truth I’m telling you.

Michael. 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 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.

Michael (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 backward 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 Michael, in a low voice). Let you not mind him at all, Michael Dara; he has a drop taken, and it’s soon he’ll be falling asleep.

Michael. 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 bog till it’s more like a pack of old goats than sheep they were.… Mountain ewes is a queen breed, Nora Burke, and I 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 Glenmalure, 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.

Michael (uneasily). Is it the man went queer in his head the year that’s gone?

Nora. It is, surely.