looking over the ditch. He's come
up, I'm thinking, stealing your hens. (Looks over his shoulder.) God
help me, he's following me now (he runs into room), and if he's heard
what I said, he'll be having my life, and I going home lonesome in the
darkness of the night. [For a perceptible moment they watch the door
with curiosity. Some one coughs outside. Then Christy Mahon, a slight
young man, comes in very tired and frightened and dirty.]

CHRISTY -- [in a small voice.] -- God save all here!

MEN. God save you kindly.

CHRISTY -- [going to the counter.] -- I'd trouble you for a glass of
porter, woman of the house. [He puts down coin.]

PEGEEN -- [serving him.] -- You're one of the tinkers, young fellow, is
beyond camped in the glen?

CHRISTY. I am not; but I'm destroyed walking.

MICHAEL -- [patronizingly.] Let you come up then to the fire. You're
looking famished with the cold.

CHRISTY. God reward you. (He takes up his glass and goes a little way
across to the left, then stops and looks about him.) Is it often the
police do be coming into this place, master of the house?

MICHAEL. If you'd come in better hours, you'd have seen "Licensed for
the sale of Beer and Spirits, to be consumed on the premises," written
in white letters above the door, and what would the polis want spying
on me, and not a decent house within four miles, the way every living
Christian is a bona fide, saving one widow alone?

CHRISTY -- [with relief.] -- It's a safe house, so. [He goes over to the
fire, sighing and moaning. Then he sits down, putting his glass beside
him and begins gnawing a turnip, too miserable to feel the others
staring at him with curiosity.]

MICHAEL -- [going after him.] -- Is it yourself fearing the polis?
You're wanting, maybe?

CHRISTY. There's many wanting.

MICHAEL. Many surely, with the broken harvest and the ended wars. (He
picks up some stockings, etc., that are near the fire, and carries them
away furtively.) It should be larceny, I'm thinking?

CHRISTY -- [dolefully.] I had it in my mind it was a different word and
a bigger.

PEGEEN. There's a queer lad. Were you never slapped in school, young
fellow, that you don't know the name of your deed?

CHRISTY -- [bashfully.] I'm slow at learning, a middling scholar only.

MICHAEL. If you're a dunce itself, you'd have a right to know that
larceny's robbing and stealing. Is it for the like of that you're
wanting?

CHRISTY -- [with a flash of family prid