rselves have to be sitting blind, hearing a soft wind turning
round the little leaves of the spring and feeling the sun, and we not
tormenting our souls with the sight of the gray days, and the holy men,
and the dirty feet is trampling the world.

[He gropes towards his stone with Mary Doul.]

MAT SIMON. It'd be an unlucky fearful thing, I'm thinking, to have
the like of that man living near us at all in the townland of Grianan.
Wouldn't he bring down a curse upon us, holy father, from the heavens of
God?

SAINT -- [tying his girdle.] -- God has great mercy, but great wrath for
them that sin.

THE PEOPLE. Go on now, Martin Doul. Go on from this place. Let you not
be bringing great storms or droughts on us maybe from the power of the
Lord. [Some of them throw things at him.]

MARTIN DOUL -- [turning round defiantly and picking up a stone.] -- Keep
off now, the yelping lot of you, or it's more than one maybe will get a
bloody head on him with the pitch of my stone. Keep off now, and let
you not be afeard; for we're going on the two of us to the towns of the
south, where the people will have kind voices maybe, and we won't know
their bad looks or their villainy at all. (He takes Mary Doul's hand
again.) Come along now and we'll be walking to the south, for we've seen
too much of everyone in this place, and it's small joy we'd have living
near them, or hearing the lies they do be telling from the gray of dawn
till the night.

MARY DOUL -- [despondingly.] -- That's the truth, surely; and we'd have
a right to be gone, if it's a long way itself, as I've heard them say,
where you do have to be walking with a slough of wet on the one side and
a slough of wet on the other, and you going a stony path with a north
wind blowing behind. [They go out.]

TIMMY. There's a power of deep rivers with floods in them where you
do have to be lepping the stones and you going to the south, so I'm
thinking the two of them will be drowned together in a short while,
surely.

SAINT. They have chosen their lot, and the Lord have mercy on their
souls. (He rings his bell.) And let the two of you come up now into the
church, Molly Byrne and Timmy the smith, till I make your marriage and
put my blessing on you all.

[He turns to the church; procession forms, and the curtain comes down,
as they go slowly into the church.]

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Well of the Saints, by J. M. Synge

*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG