had a right to keep her spancelled in the asylum. She would begrudge any respectable person to be walking the street. She'd hoot you, she'd shout you, she'd clap her hands at you. She is a blight in the town.

Hyacinth Halvey: There is a lad along with her.

Shawn Early: It is Davideen, her brother, that is innocent. He was left rambling from place to place the time she was put within walls.

(Cracked Mary and Davideen come in. Miss Joyce clings to Hyacinth's arm.)

Cracked Mary: Give me a charity now, the way I'll be keeping a little rag on me and a little shoe to my foot. Give me the price of tobacco and the price of a grain of tea; for tobacco is blessed and tea is good for the head.

Shawn Early: Give out now, Davideen, a verse of "The Heather Broom." That's a splendid tune.

Davideen: (Sings.)

  Oh, don't you remember,
  As it's often I told you,
  As you passed through our kitchen,
  That a new broom sweeps clean?
  Come out now and buy one,
  Come out now and try one—

(His voice cracks, and he breaks off, laughing foolishly.)

Mrs. Broderick: He has a sweet note in his voice, but to know or to understand what he is doing, he couldn't do it.

Cracked Mary: Leave him a while. His song that does be clogged through the daytime, the same as the sight is clogged with myself. It isn't but in the night time I can see anything worth while. Davy is a proper boy, a proper boy; let you leave Davy alone. It was himself came before me ere yesterday in the morning, and I walking out the madhouse door.

Shawn Early: It is often there will fiddlers be waiting to play for them coming out, that are maybe the finest dancers of the day.

Cracked Mary: Waiting before me he was, and no one to give him knowledge unless it might be the Big Man. I give you my word he near ate the face off me. As glad to see me he was as if I had dropped from heaven. Come hither to me, Davy, and give no heed to them. It is as dull and as lagging as themselves you would be maybe, and the world to be different and the moon to change its courses with the sun.

Bartley Fallon: I never would wish to be put within a madhouse before I'd die.

Cracked Mary: Sorry they were losing me. There was not a better prisoner in it than my own four bones.

Bartley Fallon: Squeals you would hear from it, they were telling me, like you'd hear at the ringing of the pigs. Savages with whips beating them the same as hounds. You would not stand and listen to them for a hundred sovereigns. Of all bad things that can come upon a man, it is certain the madness is the last.

Miss Joyce: It is likely she was well content in it, and the friends she had being of her own class.

Cracked Mary: What way could you make friends with people would be always talking? Too much of talk and of noise there was in it, cursing, and praying, and tormenting; some dancing, some singing, and one writing a letter to a she devil called Lucifer. I not to close my ears, I would have lost the sound of Davideen's song.

Miss Joyce: It was good shelter you got in it through the bad weather, and not to be out perishing under cold, the same as the starlings in the snow.

Cracked Mary: I was my seven months in it, my seven months and a day. My good clothes that went astray on me and my boots. My fine gaudy dress was all moth-eated, that was worked with the wings of birds. To fall into dust and ashes it did, and the wings rose up into the high air.

Bartley Fallen. Take care would the madness catch on to ourselves the same as the chin-cough or the pock.

Mrs. Broderick: Ah, that's not the way it goes travelling from one to another, but some that are naturally cracked and inherit it.

Shawn Early: It is a family failing with her tribe. The most of them get giddy in their latter end.

Miss Joyce: It might be it was sent as a punishment before birth, for to show the power of God.

Peter Tannian: It is tea-drinking does it, and that is the reason it is on the wife it is apt to fall for the most part.

Mrs. Broderick: Ah, there's some does be thinking their wives isn't right, and there's others think they are too right. There to be any fear of me going astray, I give you my word I'd lose my wits on the moment.

Hyacinth Halvey: There are some say it is the moon.

Shawn Early: So it is too. The time the moon is going back, the blood that is in a person does be weakening, but when the moon is strong, the blood that moves strong in the same way. And it to be at the full, it drags the wits along with it, the same as it drags the tide.

Mrs. Broderick: Those that are light show off more and have the talk of twenty the time it is at the full, that is sure enough. And to hold up a silk handkerchief and to look through it, you would see the four quarters of the moon; I was often told that.

Miss Joyce: It is not you, Mr. Halvey, will give in to an unruly thing like the moon, that is under no authority, and cannot be put back, the same as a fast day that would chance to fall upon a feast.

Hyacinth Halvey: It is likely it is put in the sky the same as a clock for our use, the way you would pick knowledge of the weather, the time the stars would be wild about it.

Mrs. Broderick: That is very nice now. The thing you'd know, you'd like to go on, and to hear more or less about it.

Miss Joyce: (To H.H.) It is a lantern for your own use it will be to-night, and his Reverence coming home through the street, and yourself coming along with him to the house.

Mrs. Broderick: That's right, Miss Joyce. Keep a good grip of him. What do you say to him talking a while ago as if his mind was running on some thought to leave Cloon?

Miss Joyce: What way could he leave it?

Hyacinth Halvey: No way at all, I'm thinking, unless there would be a miracle worked by the moon.

Mrs. Broderick: Ah, miracles is gone out of the world this long time, with education, unless that they might happen in your own inside.

Miss Joyce: I'll go set the table and kindle the fire, and I'll come back to meet the train with you myself.

(She goes. A noise heard outside.)

Hyacinth Halvey: What is that now?

Shawn Early: (At door.) Some noise as of running.

Hartley Fallon: (Going to door.) It might chance to be some prisoner they would be bringing to the train.

Peter Tannian: No, but some lads that are running.

(They go out. H.H. is going too, but Mrs. Broderick goes before him and turns him round in doorway.)

Mrs. Broderick: Don't be coming out now in the dust that was formed by the heat is in the breeze. It would be a pity to spoil your Dublin coat, or your shirt that is that white you would nearly take it to be blue.

(She goes out, pushing him in and shutting door after her.)

Cracked Mary: Ha! ha! ha!

Hyacinth Halvey: What is it you are laughing at?

Cracked