self has me
destroyed, and he a liar on walls, a talker of folly, a man you'd see
stretched the half of the day in the brown ferns with his belly to the
sun.

WIDOW QUIN. Not working at all?

MAHON. The divil a work, or if he did itself, you'd see him raising up a
haystack like the stalk of a rush, or driving our last cow till he broke
her leg at the hip, and when he wasn't at that he'd be fooling over
little birds he had -- finches and felts -- or making mugs at his own
self in the bit of glass we had hung on the wall.

WIDOW QUIN -- [looking at Christy.] -- What way was he so foolish? It
was running wild after the girls may be?

MAHON -- [with a shout of derision.] -- Running wild, is it? If he seen
a red petticoat coming swinging over the hill, he'd be off to hide in
the sticks, and you'd see him shooting out his sheep's eyes between the
little twigs and the leaves, and his two ears rising like a hare looking
out through a gap. Girls, indeed!

WIDOW QUIN. It was drink maybe?

MAHON. And he a poor fellow would get drunk on the smell of a pint. He'd
a queer rotten stomach, I'm telling you, and when I gave him three pulls
from my pipe a while since, he was taken with contortions till I had to
send him in the ass cart to the females' nurse.

WIDOW QUIN -- [clasping her hands.] -- Well, I never till this day heard
tell of a man the like of that!

MAHON. I'd take a mighty oath you didn't surely, and wasn't he the
laughing joke of every female woman where four baronies meet, the way
the girls would stop their weeding if they seen him coming the road to
let a roar at him, and call him the looney of Mahon's.

WIDOW QUIN. I'd give the world and all to see the like of him. What kind
was he?

MAHON. A small low fellow.

WIDOW QUIN. And dark?

MAHON. Dark and dirty.

WIDOW QUIN -- [considering.] I'm thinking I seen him.

MAHON -- [eagerly.] An ugly young blackguard.

WIDOW QUIN. A hideous, fearful villain, and the spit of you.

MAHON. What way is he fled?

WIDOW QUIN. Gone over the hills to catch a coasting steamer to the north
or south.

MAHON. Could I pull up on him now?

WIDOW QUIN. If you'll cross the sands below where the tide is out,
you'll be in it as soon as himself, for he had to go round ten miles by
the top of the bay. (She points to the door). Strike down by the head
beyond and then follow on the roadway to the north and east. [Mahon goes
abruptly.]

WIDOW QUIN -- [shouting after him.] -- L