Let you call
to the cracked woman that should know.

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ Come hither, Mary, and tell us is there any one
of your own sort in this shed?

_Mrs. Broderick:_ That is a good thought. It is only themselves
that recognise one another.

_Bartley Fallon:_ Do not ask her! I will not leave it to her!

_Mrs. Broderick:_ Sure, she cannot say more than what yourself has
said against yourself.

_Bartley Fallon:_ I'm in dread she might know too much, and be
telling out what is within in my mind.

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ That's foolishness. These are not the ancient
times, when Ireland was full of haunted people.

_Bartley Fallon:_ Is a man having a wife and three acres of land
to be put under the judgment of a witch?

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ I would not give in to any pagan thing, but to
recognise one of her own sort, that is a thing can be understood.

_Mrs. Broderick:_ So it could be too, the same as witnesses in a
court.

_Bartley Fallon:_ I will not give in to going to demons or druids
or freemasons! Wasn't there enough of misfortune set before my path
through every day of my lifetime without it to be linked with me
after my death? Is it that you would force me to lose the comforts
of heaven and to get the poverty of hell? I tell you I will have no
trade with witches! I would sooner go face the featherbeds.

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ Say out, girl, do you see any craziness here or
anything of the sort?

_Cracked Mary:_ Every day in the year there comes some malice into
the world, and where it comes from is no good place.

_Mrs. Broderick:_ That is it, a venomous dew, as in the year of
the famine. There is no astronomer can say it is from the earth or
the sky.

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ It is what we are asking you, did any of that
malice get its scope in this place?

_Cracked Mary:_ That was settled in Mayo two thousand years ago.

_Mrs. Broderick:_ Ah, there's no head or tail to that one's story.
You 'd be left at the latter end the same as at the commencement.

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ That dog you were talking of, that is raging
through the district and the town--did it leave any madness after it?

_Cracked Mary:_ It will go in the wind, there is a certain time
for that. It might go off in the wind again. It might go shaping off
and do no harm.

_Bartley Fallon:_ Where is that dog presently, till some person
might go pluck out a few ribs of its hair?

_Cracked Mary:_ Raging ever and always it is, raging wild. Sure,