Hazel EDITOR OF "CHAMPION" Mineog EDITOR OF "TRIBUNE" John A WAITER

Scene: Dining room of Royal Hotel Cloonmore.

Hazel: (Coming in.) Did Mr. Mineog come yet, John?

John: He did not, Mr. Hazel. Ah, he won't be long coming. It's seldom he does be late.

Hazel: Is the dinner ready?

John: It is, sir. Boiled beef and parsnips, the same as every Monday for all comers, and an apple pie for yourself and Mr. Mineog.

Mineog: (Coming in.) Mr. Hazel is the first tonight. I'm glad to see you looking so good.

(They take off coats and give to waiter.)

Mineog: Put that on its own peg.

Hazel: And mine on its own peg to the rear.

John: I will, sir.

(He drops coats in putting them up. Then notices broken pane in window and picks up the coats hurriedly, putting them on wrong pegs. Hazel and Mineog have sat down.)

Hazel: Have you any strange news?

Mineog: I have but the same news I always have, that it is quick Monday comes around, and that it is hard make provision for to fill up the four sheets of the Tribune, and nothing happening in these parts worth while. There would seem to be no news on this day beyond all days of the year.

Hazel: Sure there is the same care and the same burden on myself. I wish I didn't put a supplement to the Champion. The deer knows what way will I fill it between this and Thursday, or in what place I can go questing after news!

Mineog: Last week passed without anything doing. It is a very backward place to give information for two papers. If it was not for the league is between us, and for us meeting here on every Monday to make sure we are taking different sides on every question may turn up, and giving every abuse to one another in print, there is no person would pay his penny for the two of them, or it may be for the one of them.

Hazel: That is so. And the worst is, there is no question ever rises that we do not agree on, or that would have power to make us fall out in earnest. It was different in my early time. The questions used to rise up then were worth fighting for.

Mineog: There are some people so cantankerous they will heat themselves in argument as to which side might be right or wrong in a war, or if wars should be in it at all, or hangings.

Hazel: Ah, when they are as long on the road as we are, they'll take things easy. Mineog: Now all the kingdoms of the earth to go struggling on one wrong side or another, or to bring themselves down to dust and ashes, it would not break our friendship. In all the years past there never did a cross word rise between us.

Hazel: There never will. What are the fights of politics and parties beside living neighbourly with one another, and to go peaceable to the grave, our selves that are the oldest residents in the Square.

Mineog: It will be long indeed before you will be followed to the grave. You didn't live no length yet. You are too fresh to go out and to forsake your wife and your family.

Hazel: Ah, when the age would be getting up on you, you wouldn't be getting younger. But it's yourself that is as full of spirit as a four-year-old. I wish I had a sovereign for every year you will reign after me in the Square.

Mineog: (Sneezes.) There is a draught of air coming in the window.

Hazel: (Rising.) Take care might it be open—no, but a pane that is out. There is a very chilly breeze sweeping in.

Mineog: (Rising.) I will put on my coat so. There is no use giving provocation to a cold.

Hazel: I'll do the same myself. It is hard to banish a sore throat.

(They put on coats. John brings in dinner. They sit down.)

Mineog: See can you baffle that draught of air, John.

John: I'll go in search of something to stop it, sir. This bit of a board I brought is too unshapely.

Mineog: Two columns of the Tribune as empty yet as anything you could see. I had them kept free for the Bishop's speech and he didn't come after.

Hazel: That's the same cause has left myself with so wide a gap.

Mineog: In the years past there used always to be something happening such as famines, or the invention of printing. The whole world has got very slack.

Hazel: You are a better hand than what I am at filling odd spaces would be left bare. It is often I think the news you put out comes partly from your own brain, and the prophecies you lay down about the weather and the crops.

Mineog: Ah, I might stick in a bit of invention sometimes, when I'm put to the pin of my collar.

Hazel: I might maybe make an attack on the Tribune for that.

Mineog: Ah, what is it but a white sin. Sure it tells every person the same thing. It doesn't tell many lies, it goes somewhere a near it.

Hazel: I spent a good while this evening searching through the shelves of the press I have in the office. I write an article an odd time, when there is nothing doing, that might come handy in a hurry.

Mineog: So have I a press of the sort, and shelves in it. I am after going through them to-day.

Hazel: But it's hard find a thing would be suitable, unless you might dress it up again someway fresh.

Mineog: I made a thought and I searching a while ago. I was thinking it would be a very nice thing to show respect to yourself, and friendliness, putting down a short account of you and of all you have done for your family and for the town.

Hazel: That is a strange thing now! I had it in my mind to do the very same service to yourself.

Mineog: Is that so?

Hazel: Your worth and your generosity and the way you have worked the Tribune for your own and for the public good.

Mineog: And another thing. I not only thought to write it but I am after writing it.

Hazel: (Suspiciously.) You had not much time for that.

Mineog: I never was one to spare myself in anything that could benefit a friend.

Hazel: Neither would I spare myself. I have my article wrote.

Mineog: I have a mind to read my own one to you, the way you will know there is nothing in it but what is friendly and is kind.

Hazel: I will do the same thing. There's nothing I have said in it but what you will like to be hearing.

Mineog: (Who has rummaged pockets.) I thought I put it in the inside pocket—no matter—here it is.

Hazel: (Rummaging.) Here is my one. I was thinking I had it lost.

Mineog: (Reading, after he has turned over a couple of sheets rapidly) "Born and bred in this Square, he took his chief pride in his native town."

Hazel: (Turning over two sheets.) "It was in this parish and district he spent the most part of his promising youth—Richly stored with world-wide knowledge."

Mineog: "Well able to give out an opinion on any matter at all."

Hazel: "To lay down his mind on paper it would be hard to beat him."

Mineog: "With all that, humble that he would halt and speak to you the same as a child——" I'm maybe putting it down a bit too simple, but the printer will give it a little shaping after.

Hazel: So will my own printer be lengthening out the words for me according to the type and the letters of the alphabet he will have plentiful and to spare.

Mineog: "Well looking and well thought of. A true Irishman in supporting all forms of sport."

Hazel: What's that? I never was one for betting on races or gaining prizes for riddles.

Mineog: It is strange now I have no recollection of putting that down. It is I myself in the days gone by would put an odd shilling on a horse.

Hazel: These typewriters would bother the world. Wait now—let me throw an eye on those papers you have in your hand.

Mineog: Not at all. I would sooner be giving it out to you myself.

Hazel: Of course it is very pleasing to be listening to so nice an account—but lend it a minute.

(Puts out hand.)

Mineog: Bring me now a bottle of wine, John—you know the sort—till I'll drink to Mr. Hazel's good health.

John: I will, sir.

Hazel: No, but bring it at my own expense till I will drink to Mr. Mineog. Just give me a hold of that paper for one minute only.

Mineog: Keep patience now. I will go through it with no delay.

Hazel: (Making a snap.) Just for one minute.

Mineog: (Clapping his hand on it.) What a hurry you are in! Stop now till I'll find the place. "Very rarely indeed has been met with so fair and so neighbourly a man."

Hazel: Give me a look at it.

Mineog: What is it ails you? You are uneasy about something. What is it you are hiding from me?

Hazel: What would I have to hide but that the papers got mixed in some way, and you have in your hand what I wrote about yourself, and not what you wrote about myself?

Mineog: What way did they get into the wrong pocket now?

Hazel: (Putting MS. in his pocket.) Give me back my own and I will give you back your own.

Mineog: I don't know. You are putting it in my mind there might be something underhand. I would like to make sure what did you say about me in the heel. (Turns over.) "He was honest and widely respected." Was honest—are you saying me to be a rogue at this time?

Hazel: That's not fair dealing to be searching through it against my will.

Mineog: "He was trusted through the whole townland." Was trusted—is it that you are making me out to be a thief?

Hazel: Well, follow your own road and take your own way.

Mineog: "——Mr. Mineog leaves no family to lament his loss, but along with the Tribune, which he fostered with the care of a father, we offer up prayers for the repose of his soul." (Stands up.) It is a notice of my death you are after writing!

Hazel: You should understand that.

Mineog: An obituary notice! Of myself! Is it that you expect me to quit the living world between this and Thursday?

Hazel: I had no thought of the kind.

Mineog: I'm not stretched yet! What call have you to go offer prayers for me?

Hazel: I tell you I had it put by this long time till I would have occasion to use it.

Mineog: Is it this long time, so, you have been waiting for my death?

Hazel: Not at all.

Mineog: You to kill me to-day and to think to bury me to-morrow!

Hazel: Can't you listen? I was wanting something to fill space.

Mineog: Would nothing serve you to fill space but only my own corpse? To go set my coffin making and to put nettles growing on my hearth! Wouldn't it be enough to rob my house or to make an attack upon my means? Wouldn't that fill up the gap?

Hazel: Let you not twist it that way!

Mineog: The time I was in the face of my little dinner to go startle me with a thing of the sort! I'm not worth the ground I stand on! For the Champion of next Thursday! I to be dead ere Thursday!

Hazel: I looked for no such thing.

Mineog: What is it makes you say me to be done and dying? Am I reduced in the face?

Hazel: You are not.

Mineog: Am I yellow and pale and shrunken?

Hazel: Why would you be?

Mineog: Would you say me to be crampy in the body? Am I staggery in the legs?

Hazel: I see no such signs.

Mineog: Is it in my hand you see them? Is it lame or is it freezed-brittle like ice?

Hazel: It is as warm and as good as my own.

Mineog: Let me take a hold of you till you will tell me has it the feel of a dead man's grip.

Hazel: I know that it has not.

Mineog: Is it shaking like a bunch of timber shavings?

Hazel: Not at all, not at all.

Mineog: It should be my hearing that is failing from me, or that I am crippled and have lost my walk.

Hazel: You are roaring and bawling without sense.

Mineog: Let the Champion go to flitters before I will die to please it! I will not give in to it driving me out of the world before my hour is spent! It would hardly ask that of a man would be of no use and no account, or even of a beast of any consequence.

Hazel: Who is asking you to die?

Mineog: Giving no time hardly for the priest to overtake me and to give me the rites of the Church!

Hazel: I tell you there is no danger of you giving up at all! Every person knows there must some sickness come before death. Some take it from a neighbour and it is put on others by God.

Mineog: Even so, it's hard say.

Hazel: You have not a ha'p'orth on you. No complaint in the world wide.

Mineog: That's nothing! Sickness comes upon some as sudden as to clap their hands.

Hazel: What are you talking about? You are thinking us to be in the days of the cholera yet!

Mineog: There are yet other diseases besides that.

Hazel: You put the measles over you and we going the road to school.

Mineog: There is more than measles has power bring a man down.

Hazel: You had the chin-cough passed and you rising. We were cut at the one time for the pock.

Mineog: A disease to be allotted to you it would find you out, and you maybe up twenty mile in the air!

Hazel: Ah, what disease could have you swept in the course of the next two days?

Mineog: That is what I'm after saying—unless you might have murder in your mind?

Hazel: Ah, what murder!

Mineog: What way are you thinking to do away with me? To shoot me with the trigger of a gun and to give me shortening of life?

Hazel: The trigger of a gun! God bless it, I never fingered such a thing in the length of my life!

Mineog: To take aim at me and destroy me; to shoot me in forty halves like a crow in the time of the wheat!

Hazel: Oh, now, don't say a thing like that!

Mineog: Or to drown me maybe in the river, enticing me across the rotten plank of the bridge. (Seizing bottle.) Will you tell me on the virtue of your oath, is death lurking in that sherry wine?

Hazel: (Pulling out paper.) Ah, God bless your jig! And how would I know is it a notice of my own death has come into my hand in the pocket of this coat I put on me through a mistake?

Mineog: Give it here. That's my property!

Hazel: (Reading.) "We sympathise with Mrs. Hazel and the family." There is proof now. Is it that you would go grieving with my wife and I to be living yet?

Mineog: I didn't follow you out beyond this world with craving for the repose of your soul. It is nothing at all beside what you wrote.

Hazel: Oh, I bear no grudge at all against you. I am not huffy and crabbed like yourself to go taking offence. Sure Kings and big people of the sort are used to see their dead-notices made ready from the hour of their birth out. And it is not anything printed on papers or any flight of words on the Tribune could give me any concern at all. See now will I be put out. (Reads.) What now is this? "Mr. Hazel was of good race, having in him the old stock of the country, the Mahons, the O'Hagans, the Casserlys——." Where now did you get that? I never heard before, a Casserly to be in my fathers.

Mineog: It might be on the side of the mother.

Hazel: It was not. My mother was a girl of the Hessians that was born in the year of the French. My grandmother was Winefred Kane.

Mineog: What is being out in one name towards drawing down the forecast of all classes of deaths upon myself?

Hazel: There are twenty thousand things you might lay down and I would give them no leave to annoy me. But I have no mind any strange family to be mixed through me, but to go my own road and to carry my own character.

Mineog: I would say you to be very crabbed to be making much of a small little mistake of the sort.

Hazel: I will not have blood put in my veins that never rose up in them by birth. You to have put a slur maybe on the whole of my posterity for ever. That now is a thing out of measure.

Mineog: It might be the Casserlys are as fair as the Hessians, and as well looking and as well reared.

Hazel: There's no one can know that. What place owns them? My tribe didn't come inside the province. Every generation was born and bred in this or in some neighbouring townland.

Mineog: Sure you will be but yourself whatever family may be laying claim to you.

Hazel: Any person of the Casserlys to have done a wrong deed at any time, the neighbours would be watching and probing my own brood till they would see might the track of it break out in any way. It ran through our race to be hard tempered, from the Kanes that are very hot.

Mineog: Why would the family of the Casserlys go doing wrong deeds more than another?

Hazel: I would never forgive it, if it was the highest man in Connacht said it.

Mineog: I tell you there to be any flaw in them, it would have worked itself out in yourself ere this.

Hazel: Putting on me the weight of a family I never knew or never heard the name of at all. It is that is killing me entirely.

Mineog: Neither did I ever hear their name or if they ever lived in the world, or did any deed good or bad in it at all.

Hazel: What made you drag them hither for to write them in my genealogies so?

Mineog: I did not drag them hither——Give me that paper. (Takes MS. and looks at it.) What would it be but a misprint? Hessian, Casserly. There does be great resemblance in the sound of a double S.

Hazel: Whether or no, you have a great wrong done me! The person I had most dependence on to be the most person to annoy me! If it was a man from the County Mayo I wouldn't see him treated that way!

Mineog: Have sense now! What would signify anything might be wrote about you, and the green scraws being over your head?

Hazel: That's the worst! I give you my oath I would not go miching from death or be in terror of the sharpness of his bones, and he coming as at the Flood to sweep the living world along with me, and leave no man on earth having penmanship to handle my deeds, or to put his own skin on my story!

Mineog: Ah it's likely the both of us will be forgotten and our names along with us, and we out in the meadow of the dead.

Hazel: I will not be forgotten! I have posterity will put a good slab over me. Not like some would be left without a monument, unless it might be the rags of a cast waistcoat would be put on sticks in a barley garden, to go flapping at the thieves of the air.

Mineog: Let the birds or the neighbours go screech after me and welcome, and I not in it to hear or to be annoyed.

Hazel: Why wouldn't we hear? I'm in dread it's too much I'll hear, and you yourself sending such news to travel abroad, that there is blood in me I concealed through my lifetime!

Mineog: What you are saying now has not the sense of reason.

Hazel: Tom Mineog to say that of me, that was my trusty comrade and my friend, what at all will strangers be putting out about me?

Mineog: Ah, what call have you to go lamenting as if you had lost all on this side of the sea!

Hazel: You to have brought that annoyance on me, what would enemies be saying of me? That it was in my breed to be cracked or to have a thorn in the tongue. There's a generation of families would be great with you, and behind you they would be backbiting you.

Mineog: They will not. You are of a family doesn't know how to say a wrong word.

Hazel: A rabbit mushroom they might say me to be, with no memory behind or around me!

Mineog: Not at all. The world knows you to be civil and brought up to mannerly ways.

Hazel: They might say me to have been a foreigner or a Jew man!

Mineog: I can bear witness you have no such yellow look. And Hazel is a natural name.

Hazel: It's likely they'll say I was a sheep-stealer or a tinker that went foraging around after food!

Mineog: You that never put your hand on a rabbit burrow or stood before a magistrate or a judge!

Hazel: They'll put me down as a grabber that was ready to quench a widow's fire!

Mineog: Oh, where are you running to at all my dear man!

Hazel: And I not to be able at that time to rise up and to get satisfaction! I to be wandering as a shadow and to see some schemer spilling out his lies! That would be the most grief in death! I to hit him a blow of my fist and he maybe not to feel it or to think it to be but a breeze of wind!

Mineog: You are going too far entirely!

Hazel: I to give out a strong curse on him and on his posterity and his land. It would kill my heart if he would take it to be no human voice, but some vanity like the hissing of geese!

Mineog: I myself would recognise your voice, and you to be living or dead.

Hazel: You say that now. But my ghost to come calling to you in the night time to rise up and to clear my character, you would run shivering to the priest as from some unnatural thing. You would call to him to come banish me with a Mass!

Mineog: The Lord be between us and harm.

Hazel: To have no power of revenge after death! My strength to go nourish weeds and grass! A lie to be told and I living I could go lay my case before the courts. So I will too! I'll silence you! I'll learn you to have done with misspellings and with death notices! I'll hinder you bringing in Casserlys! I go take advice from the lawyer! (Goes towards door.)

Mineog: I'll go lay down my own case and the way that you have my life threatened!

Hazel: I'll get justice and a hearing. The Judge will give in to my say!

Mineog: I that will put you under bail! I'll bind you over to quit prophesying!

Hazel: I'll break the bail of the sun and moon before I'll give you leave to go brand me with strange names the same as you would tarbrand a sheep! I'll put yourself and your Tribune under the law of libel!

Mineog: I'll make a world's wonder of you! I'll give plenty and enough to the Champion to fill out its windy pages that time!

Hazel: (At door.) I will lay my information before you will overtake me!

Mineog: (Seizing him.) I will lay my information against you for theft and you bringing away my coat!

Hazel: I have no intention of bringing it away!

Mineog: Is it that you will deny it? Don't I know that spot of grease on the sleeve?

Hazel: Did I never carve a goose? Why wouldn't there be a spot of grease on my own sleeve?

Mineog: Strip it off of you this minute!

Hazel: Give me back my own coat, so!

Mineog: What are you talking about! That's a great wonder now. So it is not my own coat.

Hazel: Strip it off before you will quit the room!

Mineog: I'll be well pleased casting it off!

Hazel: You will not cast it on the dust and the dirt of the floor! (Helps him.) Go easy now.——That's it——

(Takes it off gently and places it on chair.)

Mineog: Give me now my own coat!

Hazel: (Struggling with it.) It fails me to get it off.

Mineog: What way did you get it on?

Hazel: It is that it is made too narrow.

Mineog: No, but yourself that has too much bulk.

Hazel: (Struggling.) There now is a tear!

Mineog: (Taking his arm.) Mind now, you'll have it destroyed.

Hazel: Give me a hand, so.

Mineog: (Helping him gently.) Have a care—it's a bit tender in the seams——give me here your hand—it is caught in the rip of the lining.

John: (Coming in, puts pie on table.) Wait now, sir, till I'll aid you to handle Mr. Hazel's coat.

(Whips off coat, takes up other coat, hangs both on pegs.)

The apple pie, Sir.

(Hazel sits down, gasping and wiping his face. Mineog turns his back.)

John: Is there anything after happening, Mr. Hazel?

Hazel: There is not—unless some sort of a battle.

John: Ah, what signifies? There to be more of battles in the world there would be less of wars.

(He pushes Mineog's chair to table.)

Hazel: (After a pause.) Apple pie?

Mineog: (Sitting down.) Indeed, I am not any way inclined for eating.

(Takes plate. John stuffs a cushion into window pane and picks up
MSS.)

John: Are these belonging to you, Mr. Mineog?

Mineog: Let you throw them on the coals of the fire, where we have no use for them presently.

Hazel: (Stopping John and taking them.) Thursday is very near at hand. Two empty columns is a large space to go fill.

Mineog: Indeed I am feeling no way fit to go writing columns.

Hazel: (Putting his MS. in his pocket.) There is nothing ails them only to begin a good way after the start, and to stop before the finish.

Mineog: (Putting his MS. in his pocket.) We'll do that. We can put such part of them as we do not need at this time back in the shelf of the press.

Hazel: (Filling glasses and lifting his.) That it may be long before they will be needed!

Mineog: (Lifting glass.) That they may never be needed!

Curtain

Patrick Kirwan CALLED DAMER Staffy Kirwan HIS BROTHER Delia Hessian HIS SISTER Ralph Hessian HER HUSBAND Simon Niland THEIR NEPHEW

DAMER'S GOLD

ACT I

Scene: The kitchen in Damer's house. Outer door at back. Door leading to an inner room to right. A dresser, a table, and a couple of chairs. An old coat and hat hanging on the wall. A knocking is heard at door at back. It is unlatched from outside. Delia comes in.

Delia: (Looking round cautiously and going back to door.) You may come in, Staffy and Ralph. There would seem to be no person here.

Staffy: Take care would Damer ask us to cross the threshold at all. I would not ask to go pushing on him, but to wait till he would call to us himself. He is not an easy led man.

Delia: (Crossing and knocking at inner door.) He is not in it. He is likely slipped out unknownst.

Ralph: Herself that thought to find him at the brink of death and nearing his last leap, after what happened him with the jennet. We heard tell of it as far as we were.

Delia: What ailed him to go own a jennet, he that has means to stable a bay horse would set the windows rattling on the public road, and it sparkling over the flintstones after dark?

Staffy: Sure he owns no fourfooted beast only the dog abroad in its box. To make its way into the haggard the jennet did, the time it staggered him with a kick. To forage out some grazing it thought to do, beyond dirt and scutchgrass among the stones. Very cross jennets do be, as it is a cross man it met with.

Delia: A queer sort of a brother he is. To go searching Ireland you wouldn't find queerer. But as soon as I got word what happened I bade Ralph to put the tacklings on the ass. We must have nature about us some way. There was silence between us long enough.

Ralph: She was thinking it might be the cause of him getting his death sooner than God has it promised to him, and that it might turn his mind more friendly like towards us, he knowing us to be at hand for to settle out his burying.

Delia: Why wouldn't it, and we being all the brothers and sisters ever he had, since Jane Niland, God rest her soul, went out last Little Christmas from the troubles and torments of the world.

Staffy: There is nothing left of that marriage now, only one young lad is said to be mostly a fool.

Delia: It is ourselves can bear witness to that, where he came into the house ere yesterday, having no way of living, since death and misfortune scattered him, but as if he was left down out of the skies.

Ralph: He has not, unless the pound piece the mother put into his hand at the last. It is much she had that itself. The time Tom Niland died from her, he didn't leave her hardly the cat.

Staffy: The lad to have any wit around him he would have come travelling hither along with yourselves, to see would he knock any kindness out of Damer.

Ralph: It is what herself was saying, it would be no advantage to him to be coming here at all, he being as he is half light, where there is nothing only will or wit could pick any profit out of Damer. She did not let on to him what side were we facing, and we travelling out from Loughtyshassy.

Staffy: It is likely he will get tidings as good as yourself. It is said, and said largely, Damer has a full gallon jar of gold.

Ralph: There is no one could lift it—God bless it—they were telling me. Filled up it is and brimmed to the very brink.

Staffy: His heart and his soul gone into it. He is death on that gallon of gold.

Delia: He would give leave to the poorhouse to bury him, if he could but put in his will they should leave it down with his bones.

Staffy: A man could live an easy life surely and that much being in the house.

Delia: There is no more grasping man within the four walls of the world. A strange thing he turning to be so ugly and prone to misery, where he was reared along with myself. I have the first covetous person yet to meet I would like! I never would go thrusting after gold, I to get all Lord Clanricarde's estate.

Ralph: She never would, only at a time she might have her own means spent and consumed.

Staffy: The house is very racked beside what it was. The hungriest cabin in the whole ring of Connemara would not show out so empty and so bare.

Delia: (Taking up a jug.) No sign in this vessel of anything that would leave a sign. I'll go bail he takes his tea in a black state, and the milk to be rotting in the churn.

Ralph: (Handling a coat and hat hanging on a nail.) That's a queer cut of a hat. That now should have been a good top-coat in its time.

Delia: For pity's sake! That is the top-coat and the hat he used to be wearing and he riding his long-tailed pony to every racecourse from this to the Curragh of Kildare. A good class of cloth it should be to last out through seventeen years.

Staffy: The time he was young and fundless he had not a bad reaching hand. He never was thrifty but lavish till he came into the ownership of the land. It is as if his luck left him, he growing timid at the time he had means to lose.

Delia: Every horse he would back at that time it would surely win all before it. I saw the people thronging him one time, taking him in their arms for joy, and the winnings coming into his hand. It is likely they ran out through the fingers as swift nearly as they flowed in.

Staffy: He grew to be very dark and crabbed from the time of the father's death. His mind was on his halfpenny ever since.

Delia: (Looking at dresser.) Spiders' webs heaped in ridges the same as windrows in a bleach of hay. What now is that there above on the upper shelf?

Ralph: (Taking it from top shelf.) It is but a pack of cards.

Staffy: They should maybe be the very same that brought him profit in his wild days. He always had a lucky hand.

Delia: (Dusting them.) You would give your seven oaths the dust to have been gathering on them since the time of the Hebrews' Flood. I'll tell you now a thing to do. We being here before him in the house, why wouldn't we ready it and put some sort of face upon it, the way he would be in humour with us coming in.

Ralph: And the way he might incline to put into our hand some good promise or some gift.

Delia: (Dusting.) I would wish no gift from any person at all, but that my mind is set at this time on a fleet of white goats and a guinea-hen are to be canted out from the Spanish woman at Lisatuwna cross by reason of the hanging gale.

Staffy: That was the way with you, Delia, from the time you could look out from the half-door, to be coveting pictures and fooleries, that would shape themselves in your mind.

Delia: There is no sin coveting things are of no great use or profit, but would show out good and have some grandeur around them. Those goats now! Browsing on the blossoms of the bushes they would be, or the herbs that give out a sweet smell. Stir yourself, Staffy, and throw your eye on that turf beyond in the corner. It is that wet you could wring from it splashes and streams. Let you rise the ashes from the sods are on the hearth and redden them with a goosewing, if there is a goosewing to be found. There is no greater beauty to be met with than the leaping of a little yellow flame.

Staffy: In my opinion there will no pay-day come for this work, but only a thank-you job; a County Clare payment, 'God spare you the health!'

Delia: Let you do it, Ralph so. (Takes potatoes from a sieve.) A roasted potato would be a nice thing to put before him, in the place of this old crust of a loaf. Put them in now around the sods, the way they will be crispy before him.

Ralph: (Taking them.) And the way he will see you are a good housekeeper and will mind well anything he might think fit to give.

Delia: (At clock.) I'll set to the right time of day the two hands of the clock are pointing a full hour before the sun. Take, Staffy, that pair of shoes and lessen from them the clay of the land. That much of doing will not break your heart. He will be as proud as the fallen angels seeing the way we have all set out before him.

(A harsh laugh is heard at inner door. They turn and see Damer watching them.)

Ralph: Glory be to God!

Delia: It is Damer was within all the time!

Staffy: What are you talking about, Delia? It is Patrick you were meaning to say.

Damer: Let her go on prattling out Damer to my face, as it is often she called it behind my shoulders. Damer the chandler, the miser got the spoil of the Danes, that was mocked at since the time of the Danes. I know well herself and the world have me christened with that nickname.

Ralph: Ah, it is not to dispraise you they put it on you, but to show you out so wealthy and so rich.

Damer: I am thinking it is not love of my four bones brings you on this day under my thatch?

Staffy: We heard tell you were after being destroyed with a jennet.

Damer: Picking up newses and tidings of me ye do be. It is short the delay was on you coming.

Delia: And I after travelling through the most of the day on the head of you being wounded and hurt, thinking you to be grieving to see one of your own! And I in dread of my life stealing past your wicked dog.

Damer: My joy he is, scaring you with his bark! If it wasn't for him you would have me clogged and tormented, coming in and bothering me every whole minute.

Delia: There is no person in Ireland only yourself but would have as much welcome for me to-day as on the first day ever they saw me!

Damer: What's that you are doing with my broom?

Delia: To do away with the spider's webs I did, where the shelves were looped with them and smothered. Look at all that came off of that pack of cards.

Damer: What call had you to do away with them, and they belonging to myself? Is it to bleed to death I should and I to get a tip of a billhook or a slasher? You and your vagaries to have left me bare, that I would be without means to quench the blood, and it to rise up from my veins and to scatter on every side!

Delia: Is it that you are without e'er a rag, and that ancient coat to be hanging on the wall?

Damer: The place swept to flitters! What is that man of yours doing and he handling my turf?

Ralph: It was herself thought to be serviceable to you, setting out the fuel that was full of dampness where it would get an air of the fire.

Damer: To dry it is it? (Seizes sods and takes them from the hearth.) And what length would it be without being burned and consumed and it not to be wet putting it on? (Pours water over it.) And I after stacking it purposely in the corner where there does be a drip from the thatch.

Ralph: She but thought it would be more answerable to you being dry.

Damer: What way could I bear the expense of a fire on the hearth and it to leave smouldering and to break out into a blaze? A month's cutting maybe to go to ashes within three minutes, and into wisps of smoke. And the price of turf in this year gone wild out of measure, and it packed so roguish you could read the printed speeches on the paper through the sods you do be buying in the creel.

Staffy: I was saying myself not to meddle with it. It is hurry is a worse friend than delay.

Damer: Where did you get those spuds are roasting there upon the hearth?

Ralph: Herself that brought them out from the sieve, thinking to make ready your meal.

Damer: My seed potatoes! Samples I got from the guardians and asked in the shops and in stores till I'd gather enough to set a few ridges in the gardens would serve me through the length of the year!

Delia: Let you be satisfied so with your mouldy bit of loaf. (Breaks a bit from it and hands it to him.)

Damer: Do not be breaking it so wasteful! The mice to have news there was as much as that of crumbs in the house, they would be running the same as chickens around the floor!

Ralph: Thinking to be comfortable to you she was, the way you would make us welcome from this out.

Damer: Which of ye is after meddling with my clock?

Delia: It was a full hour before its time.

Darner: It to be beyond its time, wouldn't that save fire and candles sending me to my bed early in the night? Leave down those boots! (Takes them from Staffy.) Is it that you are wearing out the uppers with scraping at them and scratching! Is it to rob me ye are come into this place?

Delia: I tell you we only came in getting word that you were done and dying.

Damer: Ha! Is it to think I was dying ye did? Well, I am not. I am not so easy quenched. Strength and courage I have, to keep a fast grip of what I own.

Delia: Let you not be talking that way! We are no grabbers and no thieves!

Damer: I have it in my mind that ye are. Very ravenous to run through my money ye are.

Delia: The world knows I am not ravenous! I never gave my heart to silver or to gold but only to the thing it would bring in. But to hold from me the thing my heart is craving after, you might as well blacken the hearth.

Damer: Striving to scare me out of my courage and my wits, the way I'll give in to go making my will.

Ralph: She would not be wishful you to do that the time your mind would be vexed.

Damer: I'll make it, sick or sound, if I have a mind to make it.

Delia: Little thanks you'll get from me if you make it or do not make it. That is the naked truth.

Damer: The whole of ye think yourselves to be very managing and very wise!

Delia: Let you go will it so to an asylum for fools.

Damer: Why wouldn't I? It is in the asylums all the sense is these times. There is only the fools left outside.

Delia: You to bestow it outside of your own kindred for to benefit and comfort your soul, all the world will say it is that you had it gathered together by fraud.

Staffy: Do not be annoying him now.

Delia: I will not. But the time he will be lying under the flagstone, it is holly rods and brambles will spring up from out of his thorny heart.

Damer: A hasty, cranky woman in the house is worse than you to lay your hand upon red coals! I know well your tongue that is as sharp as the sickle of the moon!

Delia: The character you will leave after you will be worse out and out than Herod's!

Damer: The devil upon the winds she is! That one was born into the world having the use of the bow and arrows!

Delia: You not to give fair play to your own, it is a pitiful ghost will appear in your image, questing and craving our prayers!

Damer: I know well what is your aim and your drift!

Delia: I say any man has a right to give thanks to the heavens, and he having decent people to will his means to, in place of people having no call to it.

Damer: Whoever I'll will it to will have call to it!

Delia: Or to part with it to low people and to mean people, and you having it to give.

Damer: Having it to give is it? Do you see that lock on the door?

Delia: I do see it and have eyes to see it.

Damer: Can you make any guess what is inside of it?

Delia: It is likely it is what there is so much talk about, your own full gallon of gold.

(Ralph takes off his hat.)

Damer: Lay now your eye to that lock hole.

Ralph: (Looking through keyhole.) It is all dusky within. It fails me to see any shining thing.

(Staffy and Delia put their eyes to keyhole but draw back disappointed.)

Darner: If you cannot see it, try can you get the smell of it. Take a good draw of it now; lay your head along the hinges of the door. So now ye may quit and scamper out of this, the whole throng of ye, robbers and hangmen and bankbreakers, bargers and bad characters, and you may believe me telling you that is the nearest ye ever will come to my gold!

(He bangs back into room locking door after him.)

Delia: He has no more nature than the brutes of the field, hunting and howling after us.

Staffy: Yourself that rose him out of his wits and his senses. We will sup sorrow for this day's work where he will put curses after us. It is best for us go back to my place. It may be to-morrow that his anger will be cured up.

Ralph: I thought it was to lay him out with candles we were brought here. I declare I came nearer furnishing out a corpse myself with the start I got.

Delia: There is no dread on me. When he gets in humour I will tackle up again to him. It is too far I came to be facing back to Loughtyshassy and I fasting from the price of my goats! Little collars I was thinking to buckle around their neck the same as a lady's lapdog, and maybe so far as a small clear-sounding bell.

(They go out, Damer comes back. He puts on clock, rakes out fire, picks up potatoes and puts them back in sieve, takes bread into his room. There is a knock at the door. Then it is cautiously opened and Simon Niland comes in, and stands near the hearth. Damer comes back and sees him.)

Damer: What are you looking for?

Simon: For what I won't get seemingly, that is a welcome.

Damer: Maybe it's for fists you are looking?

Simon: It is not, before I will get my rest. I couldn't box to-night if I was the Queen of England.

Damer: Have you any traffic with that congregation is after going out?

Simon: I seen no person good or bad, but a dog and it on the chain.

Damer: You to have in you any of the breed of the Kirwans that is my own, I'd rise the tongs and pitch you out from the door!

Simon: I suppose you would not begrudge me to rest myself for a while, (Sits down.)

Damer: I'll give leave to no strolling vagabond to sit in any place at all.

Simon: All right so.
(Tosses a coin he takes from his pocket, tied in a spotted
handkerchief.)

Damer: What's that you're doing?

Simon: Pitching a coin I was to see would it bid me go west or east.

Damer: Go toss outside so.

Simon: (Stooping and groping.) I will after I will find it.

Damer: Hurry on now.

Simon: Wait till I'll kindle a match. (Lights one and picks up coin.)

Damer: What is that in your hand?

Simon: You should know.

Damer: Is it gold it is?

Simon: It is all I have of means in the world. I never handled a coin before it, but my bite to be given me and my bed.

Damer: You'll mind it well if you have sense.

Simon: It is towards the east it bade me go. I'll travel as far as the races of Knockbarron to-morrow.

Damer: You'll be apt to lose it going to races.

Simon: I'll go bet with it, and see what way will it turn out.

Damer: You to set all you own upon a horse that might fail at the leaps! It is a very foolish thing doing that.

Simon: It might not. Some have luck and are born lucky and more have run through their luck. If I lose it, it is lost. It would not keep me long anyway. I to win, I will have more and plenty.

Damer: You will surely lose it.

Simon: If I do I have nothing to get or to fall back on. It is some other one must take my charges.

Damer: A great pity to go lose a gold sovereign to some schemer you never saw before.

Simon: Sure you must take some risk. You cannot put your hands around the world.

Damer: It to be swept by a trick of the loop man!

Simon: It is not with that class I will make free.

Damer: To go lose the whole of it in one second of time!

Simon: I will make four divides of it.

Damer: To go change it into silver and into copper! That would be the most pity in the world.

Simon: I'll chance it all upon the one jock so.

Damer: Gold! Believe me it is a good thing to hold and a very heartbreak the time it is lost. (Takes it in his hand.) Pure gold! There is not a thing to be got with it as worthy as what it is itself! There is no comfort in any place and it not in it. The Queen's image on it and her crown. Solid between the fingers; weighty in the palm of the hand; as beautiful as ever I saw.

Simon: It is likely it is the same nearly as any other one.

Damer: Gold! My darling it is! From the hollows of the world to the heights of the world there is no grander thing to be found. My bone and my marrow! Let me have the full of my arms of it and I'll not ask the flowers of field or fallow or the dancing of the Easter sun!

Simon: I am thinking you should be Damer. I heard said Damer has a full crock of gold.

Damer: He has not! He has not!

Simon: That is what the world says anyway. I heard it as far as the seaside.

Damer: I wish to my God it was true!

Simon: Full and brimming to the brink. That is the way it was told.

Damer: It is not full! It is not! Whisper now. It is many a time I thought it to be full, full at last, full at last!

Simon: And it wasn't after?

Damer: To take it and to shake it I do. It is often I gave myself a promise the time there will be no sound from it, I will give in to nourish myself, I will rise out of misery. But every time I will try it, I will hear a little clatter that tells me there is some space left; some small little hole or gap.

Simon: What signifies that when you have so much in it?

Damer: Weightier it gets and weightier, but there will always be that little sound. I thought to stop it one time, putting in a fistful of hayseed; but I felt in my heart that was not dealing fair and honest with myself, and I rose up and shook it out again, rising up from my bed in the night time. I near got my death with the cold and the draught fell on me doing that.

Simon: It is best for me be going on where I might find my bed,

Damer: Hearken now. I am old and the long road behind me. You are young and in your strength. It is you is rich, it is I myself that is poor. You know well, you to get the offer, you would not change your lot with my own.

Simon: I suppose I might not. I'd as lief keep my countenance and my run.

Darner: Isn't it a great pity there to be that hollow within in my gallon, and the little coin that would likely just fill it up, to be going out of the house?

Simon: Is it that you are asking it of me?

Damer: You might never find so good a way to open Heaven to yourself with a charity. To be bringing peace to an old man that has not long to live in the world! You wouldn't think now how quiet I would sleep, and the good dreams would be going through me, and that gallon jar to be full and to make no sound the time I would roll it on the floor. That would be a great deed for one little pound piece to do!

Simon: I'll toss you for it.

Damer: I would not dare put anything at all upon a chance.

Simon: Leave it alone so. (Turns away.)

Damer: (Seizing him.) It would make such a good appearance in the little gap!

Simon: Head or harp?

Damer: No, I'm in dread I might lose.

Simon: Take your chance or leave it.

Damer: I to lose, you may kill me on the moment! My heart is driven down in the sole of my shoe!

Simon: That is poor courage.

Damer: There is some shiver forewarning me I will lose! I made a strong oath I never would give in again to try any sort of chance.

Simon: You didn't make it but with yourself.

Damer: It was through my luck leaving me I swore against betting and gaming.

Simon: It might turn back fresh and hearty where you gave it so long a rest.

Damer: Well—maybe——

Simon: Here now.

Damer: I dare not.

Simon: (Going to door.) I'll make my bet so according to a dream I had. It is on a red horse I will put it to-morrow.

Damer: No—stop—wait a minute.

Simon: I'll win surely following my dream.

Damer: I might not lose.

Simon: I'm in dread of that. All turns to the man is rich.

Damer: I'll chance it!

Simon: You said no and I'll take no.

Damer: You cannot go back of your word.

Simon: Let me go out from you tempting me.

Damer: (Seizing him.) Heads! I say heads!

Simon: Harps it is. I win.

Damer: My bitter grief! Ochone!

Simon: I'll toss you for another.

Damer: You will not. What's tosses? Look at here what is put in my way! (Holds up pack of cards.)

Simon: Where's the stakes?

Damer: Wait a second. (Goes into room.)

Simon: Hurry on or I won't stop.

Damer: Let you not stir out of that!
(Comes back and throws money on table.)

Simon: Come on so.
(Shuffles cards.)

Darner: Give me the pack. (Cuts.) I didn't feel a card between my fingers this seven and a half-score years!

Simon: Spades are trumps.

Darner: (Lighting candle.) I'll win it back! I won't begrudge spending a penny candle, no, or two penny candles! I'll play you to the brink of day!

Curtain