ley will be lost now, and let you call
in Eamon and make me a good coffin out of the white boards, for I
won't live after them. I've had a husband, and a husband's
father, and six sons in this house--six fine men, though it was a
hard birth I had with every one of them and they coming to the
world--and some of them were found and some of them were not
found, but they're gone now, the lot of them.... There were
Stephen, and Shawn, were lost in the great wind, and found after
in the Bay of Gregory of the Golden Mouth, and carried up the two
of them on the one plank, and in by that door.

(_She pauses for a moment, the girls start as if they heard
something through the door that is half-open behind them._)

NORA (_in a whisper_). Did you hear that, Cathleen? Did you hear a
noise in the northeast?

CATHLEEN (_in a whisper_). There's someone after crying out by the
seashore.

MAURYA (_continues without hearing anything_). There was Sheamus
and his father, and his own father again, were lost in a dark
night, and not a stick or sign was seen of them when the sun went
up. There was Patch after was drowned out of a curagh that turned
over. I was sitting here with Bartley, and he a baby, lying on my
two knees, and I seen two women, and three women, and four women
coming in, and they crossing themselves, and not saying a word. I
looked out then, and there were men coming after them, and they
holding a thing in the half of a red sail, and water dripping out
of it--it was a dry day, Nora--and leaving a track to the door.

(_She pauses again with her hand stretched out towards the door.
It opens softly and old women begin to come in, crossing
themselves on the threshold, and kneeling down in front of the
stage with red petticoats over their heads._)

MAURYA (_half in a dream, to Cathleen_). Is it Patch, or Michael,
or what is it at all?

CATHLEEN. Michael is after being found in the far north, and when
he is found there how could he be here in this place?

MAURYA. There does be a power of young men floating round in the
sea, and what way would they know if it was Michael they had, or
another man like him, for when a man is nine days in the sea, and
the wind blowing, it's hard set his own mother would be to say
what man was it.

CATHLEEN. It's Michael, God spare him, for they're after sending
us a bit of his clothes from the far north.

(_She reaches out and hands MAURYA the clothes that belonged to_
MICHAEL. MAURYA _st