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’d 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: Nora and Michael’s backs are turned to the bed.

Michael (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’d never pass it night or morning without speaking with yourself.

Nora (in a low voice). It was no lie you heard, Michael Dara.

Michael. 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, Michael Dara, and it’s no lie I’m telling you.

Michael (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?

Michael (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 the 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, Michael 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.

Michael (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, Michael 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.

Michael (moving over three of the piles). That’s three pounds we have now, Nora Burke.