MRS. FALLON. Don't say a word! I won't listen to any word you'll
say! (_Stops her ears._) Oh, isn't he the treacherous villain?
Ohone go deo!
BARTLEY. Be quiet till I speak! Listen to what I say!
MRS. FALLON. Sitting beside me on the ass car coming to the town,
so quiet and so respectable, and treachery like that in his
heart!
BARTLEY. Is it your wits you have lost, or is it I myself that
have lost my wits?
MRS. FALLON. And it's hard I earned you, slaving, slaving--and
you grumbling, and sighing, and coughing, and discontented, and
the priest wore out anointing you, with all the times you
threatened to die!
BARTLEY. Let you be quiet till I tell you!
MRS. FALLON. You to bring such a disgrace into the parish. A
thing that was never heard of before!
BARTLEY. Will you shut your mouth and hear me speaking?
MRS. FALLON. And if it was for any sort of a fine handsome woman,
but for a little fistful of a woman like Kitty Keary, that's not
four feet high hardly, and not three teeth in her head unless she
got new ones! May God reward you, Bartley Fallon, for the black
treachery in your heart and the wickedness in your mind, and the
red blood of poor Jack Smith that is wet upon your hand!
(_Voice of JACK SMITH heard singing_)
The sea shall be dry,
The earth under mourning and ban!
Then loud shall he cry
For the wife of the red-haired man!
BARTLEY. It's Jack Smith's voice--I never knew a ghost to sing
before. It is after myself and the fork he is coming! (_Goes back.
Enter_ JACK SMITH.) Let one of you give him the fork and I will be
clear of him now and for eternity!
MRS. TARPEY. The Lord have mercy on us! Red Jack Smith! The man
that was going to be waked!
JAMES RYAN. Is it back from the grave you are come?
SHAWN EARLY. Is it alive you are, or is it dead you are?
TIM CASEY. Is it yourself at all that's in it?
MRS. TULLY. Is it letting on you were to be dead?
MRS. FALLON. Dead or alive, let you stop Kitty Keary, your wife,
from bringing my man away with her to America!
JACK SMITH. It is what I think, the wits are gone astray on the
whole of you. What would my wife want bringing Bartley Fallon to
America?
MRS. FALLON. To leave yourself, and to get quit of you she wants,
Jack Smith, and to bring him away from myself. That's what the
two of them had settled together.
JACK SMITH. I'll break the head of any man that says that! Who is
it says it? (_To_ TIM CASEY) Was it you said it? (_To_ SHAWN EARLY)
Was it you?
ALL TOGETHER (_backing and shaking their heads_). It wasn't I said
it!
JACK SMITH. Tell me the name of any man that said it!
ALL TOGETHEB (_pointing to_ BARTLEY). It was _him_ that said
it!
JACK SMITH. Let me at him till I break his head!
(BARTLEY _backs in terror. Neighbors hold_ JACK SMITH _back._)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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