ANDREW. Maybe so, maybe so. It seems to me yesterday his cheeks were bloomy all the while, and now he is as pale as wood-ashes. Sure we all must come to it at the last. Well, my white-headed darling, it is you were the bush among us all, and you to be cut down in your prime. Gentle and simple, everyone liked you. It is no narrow heart you had; it is you were for spending and not for getting. It is you made a good wake for yourself, scattering your estate in one night only in beer and in wine for the whole province; and that you may be sitting in the middle of paradise and in the chair of the graces! JOHNNY B. Amen to that. It's pity I didn't think the time I sent for yourself to send the little lad of a messenger looking for a priest to overtake him. It might be in the end the Almighty is the best man for us all! ANDREW. Sure I sent him on myself to bid the priest to come. Living or dead, I would wish to do all that is rightful for the last and the best of my own race and generation. BIDDY [_jumping up_]. Is it the priest you are bringing in among us? Where is the sense in that? Aren't we robbed enough up to this with the expense of the candles and the like? JOHNNY B. If it is that poor, starved priest he called to that came talking in secret signs to the man that is gone, it is likely he will ask nothing for what he has to do. There is many a priest is a Whiteboy in his heart. NANNY. I tell you, if you brought him tied in a bag he would not say an Our Father for you, without you having a half crown at the top of your fingers. BIDDY. There is no priest is any good at all but a spoiled priest; a one that would take a drop of drink, it is he would have courage to face the hosts of trouble. Rout them out he would, the same as a shoal of fish from out the weeds. It's best not to vex a priest, or to run against them at all. NANNY. It's yourself humbled yourself well to one the time you were sick in the gaol and had like to die, and he bade you to give over the throwing of the cups. BIDDY. Ah, plaster of Paris I gave him. I took to it again and I free upon the roads. NANNY. Much good you are doing with it to yourself or any other one. Aren't you after telling that corpse no later than yesterday that he was coming within the best day of his life? JOHNNY B. Whist, let ye! Here is the priest coming. [FATHER JOHN _comes in._] FATHER JOHN. It is surely not true that he is dead? JOHNNY B. The spirit went from him about the middle hour of the night. We brought him here to this sheltered place. We were loth to leave him without friends. FATHER JOHN. Where is he? JOHNNY B. [_taking up sacks_]. Lying there, stiff and stark. He has a very quiet look, as if there was no sin at all or no great trouble upon his mind. FATHER JOHN [_kneels and touches him_]. He is not dead. BIDDY [_pointing to_ NANNY]. He is dead. If it was letting on he was, he would not have let that one rob him and search him the way she did.