AURYA _sways herself on her stool._)

CATHLEEN (_cutting off some of the bread and rolling it in a
cloth, to_ MAURYA). Let you go down now to the spring well and
give him this and he passing. You'll see him then and the dark
word will be broken, and you can say, "God speed you," the way
he'll be easy in his mind.

MAURYA (_taking the bread_). Will I be in it as soon as himself?

CATHLEEN. If you go now quickly.

MAURYA (_standing up unsteadily_). It's hard set I am to walk.

CATHLEEN (_looking at her anxiously_). Give her the stick, Nora, or
maybe she'll slip on the big stones.

NORA. What stick?

CATHLEEN. The stick Michael brought from Connemara.

MAURYA (_taking a stick NORA gives her_). In the big world the old
people do be leaving things after them for their sons and
children, but in this place it is the young men do be leaving
things behind for them that do be old.

(_She goes out slowly. NORA goes over to the ladder._)

CATHLEEN. Wait, Nora, maybe she'd turn back quickly. She's that
sorry, God help her, you wouldn't know the thing she'd do.

NORA. Is she gone round by the bush?

CATHLEEN (_looking out_). She's gone now. Throw it down quickly,
for the Lord knows when she'll be out of it again.

NORA (_getting the bundle from the loft_). The young priest said
he'd be passing to-morrow, and we might go down and speak to him
below if it's Michael's they are surely.

CATHLEEN (_taking the bundle_). Did he say what way they were
found?

NORA (_coming down_). "There were two men," says he, "and they
rowing round with poteen before the cocks crowed, and the oar of
one of them caught the body, and they passing the black cliffs of
the north."

CATHLEEN (_trying to open the bundle_). Give me a knife, Nora; the
string's perished with the salt water, and there's a black knot
on it you wouldn't loosen in a week.

NORA (_giving her a knife_). I've heard tell it was a long way to
Donegal.

CATHLEEN (_cutting the string_). It is surely. There was a man in
here a while ago--the man sold us that knife--and he said if you
set off walking from the rocks beyond, it would be seven days
you'd be in Donegal.

NORA. And what time would a man take, and he floating?

(CATHLEEN _opens the bundle and takes out a bit of a stocking.
They look at them eagerly._)

CATHLEEN (_in a low voice_). The Lord spare us, Nora! Isn't it a
queer hard thing to say if it's his they are surely?

NORA. I'll get his shirt off the ho