nd hanging
before, and hell's gap gaping below.

PEGEEN [with a sign to the men to be quiet.] -- You're only saying it.
You did nothing at all. A soft lad the like of you wouldn't slit the
windpipe of a screeching sow.

CHRISTY -- [offended.] You're not speaking the truth.

PEGEEN -- [in mock rage.] -- Not speaking the truth, is it? Would you
have me knock the head of you with the butt of the broom?

CHRISTY -- [twisting round on her with a sharp cry of horror.] -- Don't
strike me. I killed my poor father, Tuesday was a week, for doing the
like of that.

PEGEEN [with blank amazement.] -- Is it killed your father?

CHRISTY -- [subsiding.] With the help of God I did surely, and that the
Holy Immaculate Mother may intercede for his soul.

PHILLY -- [retreating with Jimmy.] -- There's a daring fellow.

JIMMY. Oh, glory be to God!

MICHAEL -- [with great respect.] -- That was a hanging crime, mister
honey. You should have had good reason for doing the like of that.

CHRISTY -- [in a very reasonable tone.] -- He was a dirty man, God
forgive him, and he getting old and crusty, the way I couldn't put up
with him at all.

PEGEEN. And you shot him dead?

CHRISTY -- [shaking his head.] -- I never used weapons. I've no license,
and I'm a law-fearing man.

MICHAEL. It was with a hilted knife maybe? I'm told, in the big world
it's bloody knives they use.

CHRISTY -- [loudly, scandalized.] -- Do you take me for a slaughter-boy?

PEGEEN. You never hanged him, the way Jimmy Farrell hanged his dog from
the license, and had it screeching and wriggling three hours at the butt
of a string, and himself swearing it was a dead dog, and the peelers
swearing it had life?

CHRISTY. I did not then. I just riz the loy and let fall the edge of
it on the ridge of his skull, and he went down at my feet like an empty
sack, and never let a grunt or groan from him at all.

MICHAEL -- [making a sign to Pegeen to fill Christy's glass.] -- And
what way weren't you hanged, mister? Did you bury him then?

CHRISTY -- [considering.] Aye. I buried him then. Wasn't I digging spuds
in the field?

MICHAEL. And the peelers never followed after you the eleven days that
you're out?

CHRISTY -- [shaking his head.] -- Never a one of them, and I walking
forward facing hog, dog, or divil on the highway of the road.

PHILLY -- [nodding wisely.] -- It's only with a common week-day kind
of a murderer them lads would be trusting their carcase, and t