to Connemara.

(NORA _picks up the turf and puts it round the pot-oven._)

MAURYA (_sitting down on a stool at the fire_). He won't go this
day with the wind rising from the south and west. He won't go
this day, for the young priest will stop him surely.

NORA. He'll not stop him, mother, and I heard Eamon Simon and
Stephen Pheety and Colum Shawn saying he would go.

MAURYA. Where is he itself?

NORA. He went down to see would there be another boat sailing in
the week, and I'm thinking it won't be long till he's here now,
for the tide's turning at the green head, and the hooker's
tacking from the east.

CATHLEEN. I hear someone passing the big stones.

NORA (_looking out_). He's coming now, and he in a hurry.

BARTLEY (_comes in and looks round the room; speaking sadly and
quietly_). Where is the bit of new rope, Cathleen, was bought in
Connemara?

CATHLEEN (_coming down_). Give it to him, Nora; it's on a nail by
the white boards. I hung it up this morning, for the pig with the
black feet was eating it.

NORA (_giving him a rope_). Is that it, Bartley?

MAURYA. You'd do right to leave that rope, Bartley, hanging by
the boards. (BARTLEY _takes the rope._) It will be wanting in this
place, I'm telling you, if Michael is washed up to-morrow
morning, or the next morning, or any morning in the week, for
it's a deep grave we'll make him by the grace of God.

BARTLEY (_beginning to work with the rope_). I've no halter the way
I can ride down on the mare, and I must go now quickly. This is
the one boat going for two weeks or beyond it, and the fair will
be a good fair for horses, I heard them saying below.

MAURYA. It's a hard thing they'll be saying below if the body is
washed up and there's no man in it to make the coffin, and I
after giving a big price for the finest white boards you'd find
in Connemara.

(_She looks round at the boards._)

BARTLEY. How would it be washed up, and we after looking each day
for nine days, and a strong wind blowing a while back from the
west and south?

MAURYA. If it wasn't found itself, that wind is raising the sea,
and there was a star up against the moon, and it rising in the
night. If it was a hundred horses, or a thousand horses you had
itself, what is the price of a thousand horses against a son
where there is one son only?

BARTLEY (_working at the halter, to_ CATHLEEN). Let you go down
each day, and see the sheep aren't jumping in on the rye, and if
the jobber