very unneighborly thing for you to do, Mrs.
Tarpey. Hadn't I enough care on me with that fork before this,
running up and down with it like the swinging of a clock, and
afeard to lay it down in any place! I wish I'd never touched it
or meddled with it at all!

JAMES RYAN. It is a pity, indeed, you ever did.

BARTLEY. Will you yourself take it, James Ryan? You were always a
neighborly man.

JAMES RYAN (_backing_). There is many a thing I would do for you,
Bartley Fallon, but I won't do that!

SHAWN EARLY. I tell you there is no man will give you any help or
any encouragement for this day's work. If it was something
agrarian now--

BARTLEY. If no one at all will take it, maybe it's best to give
it up to the police.

TIM CASEY. There'd be a welcome for it with them surely!

(_Laughter._)

MRS. TULLY. And it is to the police Kitty Keary herself will be
brought.

MRS. TARPEY (_rocking to and fro_). I wonder now who will take the
expense of the wake for poor Jack Smith?

BARTLEY. The wake for Jack Smith!

TIM CASEY. Why wouldn't he get a wake as well as another? Would
you begrudge him that much?

BARTLEY. Red Jack Smith dead! Who was telling you?

SHAWN EARLY. The whole town knows of it by this.

BARTLEY. Do they say what way did he die?

JAMES RYAN. You don't know that yourself, I suppose, Bartley
Fallon? You don't know he was followed and that he was laid dead
with the stab of a hayfork?

BARTLEY. The stab of a hayfork!

SHAWN EARLY. You don't know, I suppose, that the body was found
in the Five-Acre Meadow?

BARTLEY. The Five-Acre Meadow!

TIM CASEY. It is likely you don't know that the police are after
the man that did it?

BARTLEY. The man that did it!

MRS. TULLY. You don't know, maybe, that he was made away with for
the sake of Kitty Keary, his wife?

BARTLEY. Kitty Keary, his wife! (_Sits down bewildered._)

MRS. TULLY. And what have you to say now, Bartley Fallon?

BARTLEY (_crossing himself_). I to bring that fork here, and to
find that news before me! It is much if I can ever stir from this
place at all, or reach as far as the road!

TIM CASEY. Look, boys, at the new magistrate, and Jo Muldoon
along with him! It's best for us to quit this.

SHAWN EARLY. That is so. It is best not to be mixed in this
business at all.

JAMES RYAN. Bad as he is, I wouldn't like to be an informer
against any man.

(_All hurry away except_ MRS. TARPEY, _who remains behind her stall.
Enter_ MAGIS