death.

CHRISTY -- [getting his boots and putting them on.] -- If there's that
terror of them, it'd be best, maybe, I went on wandering like Esau or
Cain and Abel on the sides of Neifin or the Erris plain.

PEGEEN [beginning to play with him.] -- It would, maybe, for I've heard
the Circuit Judges this place is a heartless crew.

CHRISTY -- [bitterly.] It's more than Judges this place is a heartless
crew. (Looking up at her.) And isn't it a poor thing to be starting
again and I a lonesome fellow will be looking out on women and girls the
way the needy fallen spirits do be looking on the Lord?

PEGEEN. What call have you to be that lonesome when there's poor girls
walking Mayo in their thousands now?

CHRISTY -- [grimly.] It's well you know what call I have. It's well you
know it's a lonesome thing to be passing small towns with the lights
shining sideways when the night is down, or going in strange places with
a dog nosing before you and a dog nosing behind, or drawn to the cities
where you'd hear a voice kissing and talking deep love in every shadow
of the ditch, and you passing on with an empty, hungry stomach failing
from your heart.

PEGEEN. I'm thinking you're an odd man, Christy Mahon. The oddest
walking fellow I ever set my eyes on to this hour to-day.

CHRISTY. What would any be but odd men and they living lonesome in the
world?

PEGEEN. I'm not odd, and I'm my whole life with my father only.

CHRISTY -- [with infinite admiration.] -- How would a lovely handsome
woman the like of you be lonesome when all men should be thronging
around to hear the sweetness of your voice, and the little infant
children should be pestering your steps I'm thinking, and you walking
the roads.

PEGEEN. I'm hard set to know what way a coaxing fellow the like of
yourself should be lonesome either.

CHRISTY. Coaxing?

PEGEEN. Would you have me think a man never talked with the girls would
have the words you've spoken to-day? It's only letting on you are to be
lonesome, the way you'd get around me now.

CHRISTY. I wish to God I was letting on; but I was lonesome all times,
and born lonesome, I'm thinking, as the moon of dawn. [Going to door.]

PEGEEN -- [puzzled by his talk.] -- Well, it's a story I'm not
understanding at all why you'd be worse than another, Christy Mahon, and
you a fine lad with the great savagery to destroy your da.

CHRISTY. It's little I'm understanding myself, saving only that my
heart's scalded t