is what the lads in the village will remember to the last day they live!

Martin. Why are they shouting? What have you told them?

Andrew. Never you mind. You left that to me. You bade me to lift their hearts, and I did lift them. There is not one among them but will have his head like a blazing tar barrel before morning. What did your friend, the beggar, say? The juice of the grey barley, he said.

Father John. You accursed villain! You have made them drunk!

Andrew. Not at all, but lifting them to the stars. That is what Martin bade me to do, and there is no one can say I did not do it.

[A shout at door and beggars push in a barrel. They all cry, "Hi! for the noble master!" and point at Andrew.]

Johnny B. It's not him, it's that one!

[Points at Martin.]

Father John. Are you bringing this devil's work in at the very door? Go out of this, I say! Get out! Take these others with you!

Martin. No, no, I asked them in; they must not be turned out. They are my guests.

Father John. Drive them out of your uncle's house!

Martin. Come, Father, it is better for you to go. Go back to your own place. I have taken the command. It is better, perhaps, for you that you did not take it. [Martin and Father John go out.]

Biddy. It is well for that old lad he didn't come between ourselves and our luck. It would be right to have flayed him and to have made bags of his skin.

Nanny. What a hurry you are in to get your enough! Look at the grease on your frock yet with the dint of the dabs you put in your pocket! Doing cures and foretellings, is it? You starved pot picker, you!

Biddy. That you may be put up to-morrow to take the place of that decent son of yours that had the yard of the gaol wore with walking it till this morning!

Nanny. If he had, he had a mother to come to, and he would know her when he did see her, and that is what no son of your own could do, and he to meet you at the foot of the gallows!

Johnny B. If I did know you, I knew too much of you since the first beginning of my life! What reward did I ever get travelling with you? What store did you give me of cattle or of goods? What provision did I get from you by day or by night but your own bad character to be joined on to my own, and I following at your heels, and your bags tied round about me?

Nanny. Disgrace and torment on you! Whatever you got from me, it was more than any reward or any bit I ever got from the father you had, or any honourable thing at all, but only the hurt and the harm of the world and its shame!

Johnny B. What would he give you, and you going with him without leave? Crooked and foolish you were always, and you begging by the side of the ditch.

Nanny. Begging or sharing, the curse of my heart upon you! It's better off I was before ever I met with you, to my cost! What was on me at all that I did not cut a scourge in the wood to put manners and decency on you the time you were not hardened as you are!

Johnny B. Leave talking to me of your rods and your scourges! All you taught me was robbery, and it is on yourself and not on myself the scourges will be laid at the day of the recognition of tricks.

Paudeen. Faith, the pair of you together is better than Hector fighting before Troy!

Nanny. Ah, let you be quiet. It is not fighting we are craving, but the easing of the hunger that is on us and of the passion of sleep. Lend me a graineen of tobacco till I'll kindle my pipe—a blast of it will take the weight of the road off my heart.

[Andrew gives her some. Nanny. grabs at it.]

Biddy. No, but it's to myself you should give it. I that never smoked a pipe this forty year without saying the tobacco prayer. Let that one say, did ever she do that much?

Nanny. That the pain of your front tooth may be in your back tooth, you to be grabbing my share! [They snap at tobacco.]

Andrew. Pup, pup, pup. Don't be snapping and quarrelling now, and you so well treated in this house. It is strollers like yourselves should be for frolic and for fun. Have you ne'er a good song to sing, a song that will rise all our hearts?

Paudeen. Johnny Bacach is a good singer; it is what he used to be doing in the fairs, if the oakum of the gaol did not give him a hoarseness in the throat.

Andrew. Give it out so, a good song; a song will put courage and spirit into any man at all.

Johnny B. [singing].