_Mother:_ (_Turning on him._) It was you took them! What business had you doing that? It’s the last time a tramp or a tinker or a rogue of the roads will have a chance of laying his hand on anything in this house. It is jailed you should be! What did you want touching the dresser at all? Is it looking you were for what you could bring away? _Travelling Man:_ (_Taking the child’s hands._) I would not refuse these hands that were held out for them. If it was for the four winds of the world he had asked, I would have put their bridles into these innocent hands. _Mother:_ (_Taking up the jug and throwing the branch on the floor._) Get out of this! Get out of this I tell you! There is no shelter here for the like of you! Look at that mud on the floor! You are not fit to come into the house of any decent respectable person! (_The room begins to darken._) _Travelling Man:_ Indeed, I am more used to the roads than to the shelter of houses. It is often I have spent the night on the bare hills. _Mother:_ No wonder in that! (_She begins to sweep floor._) Go out of this now to whatever company you are best used to, whatever they are. The worst of people it is likely they are, thieves and drunkards and shameless women. _Travelling Man:_ Maybe so. Drunkards and thieves and shameless women, stones that have fallen, that are trodden under foot, bodies that are spoiled with sores, bodies that are worn with fasting, minds that are broken with much sinning, the poor, the mad, the bad.... _Mother:_ Get out with you! Go back to your friends, I say! _Travelling Man:_ I will go. I will go back to the high road that is walked by the bare feet of the poor, by the innocent bare feet of children. I will go back to the rocks and the wind, to the cries of the trees in the storm! (_He goes out._) _Child:_ He has forgotten his branch! (_Takes it and follows him._) _Mother:_ (_Still sweeping._) My good plates from the dresser, and dirty red mud on the floor, and the sticks all scattered in every place. (_Stoops to pick them up._) Where is the child gone? (_Goes to door._) I don’t see him—he couldn’t have gone to the river—it is getting dark—the bank is slippy. Come back! Come back! Where are you? (_Child runs in._) _Mother:_ O where were you? I was in dread it was to the river you were gone, or into the river. _Child:_ I went after him. He is gone over the river. _Mother:_ He couldn’t do that. He couldn’t go through the flood. _Child:_ He did go over it. He was as if walking on the water. There was a light before his feet. _Mother:_ That could not be so. What put that thought in your mind? _Child:_ I called to him to come back for the branch, and he turned where he was in the river, and he bade me to bring it back, and to show it to yourself.