_Scene: A ward in Cloon Workhouse. The two old men in their beds._

_Michael Miskell:_ Isn't it a hard case, Mike McInerney, myself and yourself to be left here in the bed, and it the feast day of Saint Colman, and the rest of the ward attending on the Ma.s.s.

_Mike McInerney:_ Is it sitting up by the hearth you are wishful to be, Michael Miskell, with cold in the shoulders and with speckled shins? Let you rise up so, and you well able to do it, not like myself that has pains the same as tin-tacks within in my inside.

_Michael Miskell:_ If you have pains within in your inside there is no one can see it or know of it the way they can see my own knees that are swelled up with the rheumatism, and my hands that are twisted in ridges the same as an old cabbage stalk. It is easy to be talking about soreness and about pains, and they maybe not to be in it at all.

_Mike McInerney:_ To open me and to a.n.a.lyse me you would know what sort of a pain and a soreness I have in my heart and in my chest. But I'm not one like yourself to be cursing and praying and tormenting the time the nuns are at hand, thinking to get a bigger share than myself of the nourishment and of the milk.

_Michael Miskell:_ That's the way you do be picking at me and faulting me. I had a share and a good share in my early time, and it's well you know that, and the both of us reared in Skehanagh.

_Mike McInerney:_ You may say that, indeed, we are both of us reared in Skehanagh. Little wonder you to have good nourishment the time we were both rising, and you bringing away my rabbits out of the snare.

_Michael Miskell:_ And you didn't bring away my own eels, I suppose, I was after spearing in the Turlough? Selling them to the nuns in the convent you did, and letting on they to be your own. For you were always a cheater and a schemer, grabbing every earthly thing for your own profit.

_Mike McInerney:_ And you were no grabber yourself, I suppose, till your land and all you had grabbed wore away from you!

_Michael Miskell:_ If I lost it itself, it was through the crosses I met with and I going through the world. I never was a rambler and a card-player like yourself, Mike McInerney, that ran through all and lavished it unknown to your mother!

_Mike McInerney:_ Lavished it, is it? And if I did was it you yourself led me to lavish it or some other one? It is on my own floor I would be to-day and in the face of my family, but for the misfortune I had to be put with a bad next door neighbour that was yourself. What way did my means go from me is it? Spending on fencing, spending on walls, making up gates, putting up doors, that would keep your hens and your ducks from coming in through starvation on my floor, and every four footed beast you had from preying and trespa.s.sing on my oats and my mangolds and my little lock of hay!

_Michael Miskell:_ O to listen to you! And I striving to please you and to be kind to you and to close my ears to the abuse you would be calling and letting out of your mouth. To trespa.s.s on your crops is it? It's little temptation there was for my poor beasts to ask to cross the mering. My G.o.d Almighty! What had you but a little corner of a field!

_Mike McInerney:_ And what do you say to my garden that your two pigs had destroyed on me the year of the big tree being knocked, and they making gaps in the wall.

_Michael Miskell:_ Ah, there does be a great deal of gaps knocked in a twelvemonth. Why wouldn't they be knocked by the thunder, the same as the tree, or some storm that came up from the west?

_Mike McInerney:_ It was the west wind, I suppose, that devoured my green cabbage? And that rooted up my Champion potatoes? And that ate the gooseberries themselves from off the bush?

_Michael Miskell:_ What are you saying? The two quietest pigs ever I had, no way wicked and well ringed. They were not ten minutes in it.

It would be hard for them eat strawberries in that time, let alone gooseberries that's full of thorns.

_Mike McInerney:_ They were not quiet, but very ravenous pigs you had that time, as active as a fox they were, killing my young ducks. Once they had blood tasted you couldn't stop them.

_Michael Miskell:_ And what happened myself the fair day of Esserkelly, the time I was pa.s.sing your door? Two brazened dogs that rushed out and took a piece of me. I never was the better of it or of the start I got, but wasting from then till now!

_Mike McInerney:_ Thinking you were a wild beast they did, that had made his escape out of the travelling show, with the red eyes of you and the ugly face of you, and the two crooked legs of you that wouldn't hardly stop a pig in a gap. Sure any dog that had any life in it at all would be roused and stirred seeing the like of you going the road!

_Michael Miskell:_ I did well taking out a summons against you that time. It is a great wonder you not to have been bound over through your lifetime, but the laws of England is queer.

_Mike McInerney:_ What ailed me that I did not summons yourself after you stealing away the clutch of eggs I had in the barrel, and I away in Ardrahan searching out a clocking hen.

_Michael Miskell:_ To steal your eggs is it? Is that what you are saying now? (_Holds up his hands._) The Lord is in heaven, and Peter and the saints, and yourself that was in Ardrahan that day put a hand on them as soon as myself! Isn't it a bad story for me to be wearing out my days beside you the same as a spancelled goat. Chained I am and tethered I am to a man that is ramsacking his mind for lies!

_Mike McInerney:_ If it is a bad story for you, Michael Miskell, it is a worse story again for myself. A Miskell to be next and near me through the whole of the four quarters of the year. I never heard there to be any great name on the Miskells as there was on my own race and name.

_Michael Miskell:_ You didn't, is it? Well, you could hear it if you had but ears to hear it. Go across to Lisheen Crannagh and down to the sea and to Newtown Lynch and the mills of Duras and you'll find a Miskell, and as far as Dublin!

_Mike McInerney:_ What signifies Crannagh and the mills of Duras? Look at all my own generations that are buried at the Seven Churches. And how many generations of the Miskells are buried in it? Answer me that!

_Michael Miskell:_ I tell you but for the wheat that was to be sowed there would be more side cars and more common cars at my father's funeral (_G.o.d rest his soul!_) than at any funeral ever left your own door. And as to my mother, she was a Cuffe from Claregalway, and it's she had the purer blood!

_Mike McInerney:_ And what do you say to the banshee? Isn't she apt to have knowledge of the ancient race? Was ever she heard to screech or to cry for the Miskells? Or for the Cuffes from Claregalway? She was not, but for the six families, the Hyneses, the Foxes, the Faheys, the Dooleys, the McInerneys. It is of the nature of the McInerneys she is I am thinking, crying them the same as a king's children.

_Michael Miskell:_ It is a pity the banshee not to be crying for yourself at this minute, and giving you a warning to quit your lies and your chat and your arguing and your contrary ways; for there is no one under the rising sun could stand you. I tell you you are not behaving as in the presence of the Lord!

_Mike McInerney:_ Is it wishful for my death you are? Let it come and meet me now and welcome so long as it will part me from yourself! And I say, and I would kiss the book on it, I to have one request only to be granted, and I leaving it in my will, it is what I would request, nine furrows of the field, nine ridges of the hills, nine waves of the ocean to be put between your grave and my own grave the time we will be laid in the ground!

_Michael Miskell:_ Amen to that! Nine ridges, is it? No, but let the whole ridge of the world separate us till the Day of Judgment! I would not be laid anear you at the Seven Churches, I to get Ireland without a divide!

_Mike McInerney:_ And after that again! I'd sooner than ten pound in my hand, I to know that my shadow and my ghost will not be knocking about with your shadow and your ghost, and the both of us waiting our time. I'd sooner be delayed in Purgatory! Now, have you anything to say?

_Michael Miskell:_ I have everything to say, if I had but the time to say it!

_Mike McInerney:_ (_Sitting up._) Let me up out of this till I'll choke you!

_Michael Miskell:_ You scolding pauper you!

_Mike McInerney:_ (_Shaking his fist at him._) Wait a while!

_Michael Miskell:_ (_Shaking his fist._) Wait a while yourself!

(_Mrs. Donohoe comes in with a parcel. She is a countrywoman with a frilled cap and a shawl. She stands still a minute. The two old men lie down and compose themselves._)

_Mrs. Donohoe:_ They bade me come up here by the stair. I never was in this place at all. I don't know am I right. Which now of the two of ye is Mike McInerney?

_Mike McInerney:_ Who is it is calling me by my name?

_Mrs. Donohoe:_ Sure amn't I your sister, Honor McInerney that was, that is now Honor Donohoe.

_Mike McInerney:_ So you are, I believe. I didn't know you till you pushed anear me. It is time indeed for you to come see me, and I in this place five year or more. Thinking me to be no credit to you, I suppose, among that tribe of the Donohoes. I wonder they to give you leave to come ask am I living yet or dead?

_Mrs. Donohoe:_ Ah, sure, I buried the whole string of them. Himself was the last to go. (_Wipes her eyes._) The Lord be praised he got a fine natural death. Sure we must go through our crosses. And he got a lovely funeral; it would delight you to hear the priest reading the Ma.s.s. My poor John Donohoe! A nice clean man, you couldn't but be fond of him. Very severe on the tobacco he was, but he wouldn't touch the drink.

_Mike McInerney:_ And is it in Curranroe you are living yet?

_Mrs. Donohoe:_ It is so. He left all to myself. But it is a lonesome thing the head of a house to have died!

_Mike McInerney:_ I hope that he has left you a nice way of living?

_Mrs. Donohoe:_ Fair enough, fair enough. A wide lovely house I have; a few acres of gra.s.s land ... the gra.s.s does be very sweet that grows among the stones. And as to the sea, there is something from it every day of the year, a handful of periwinkles to make kitchen, or c.o.c.kles maybe. There is many a thing in the sea is not decent, but c.o.c.kles is fit to put before the Lord!

_Mike McInerney:_ You have all that! And you without ere a man in the house?

_Mrs. Donohoe:_ It is what I am thinking, yourself might come and keep me company. It is no credit to me a brother of my own to be in this place at all.

_Mike McInerney:_ I'll go with you! Let me out of this! It is the name of the McInerneys will be rising on every side!