NORA. (_To Micheal in a low voice._) Let you not mind him at all, Micheal Dara, he has a drop taken and it’s soon he’ll be falling asleep. MICHEAL. It’s no lie he’s telling, I was destroyed surely. They were that wilful they were running off into one man’s bit of oats, and another man’s bit of hay, and tumbling into the red bogs till it’s more like a pack of old goats than sheep they were. Mountain ewes is a queer breed, Nora Burke, and I’m not used to them at all. NORA. (_Settling the tea things._) There’s no one can drive a mountain ewe but the men do be reared in the Glen Malure, I’ve heard them say, and above by Rathvanna, and the Glen Imaal, men the like of Patch Darcy, God spare his soul, who would walk through five hundred sheep and miss one of them, and he not reckoning them at all. MICHEAL. (_Uneasily._) Is it the man went queer in his head the year that’s gone? NORA. It is surely. TRAMP. (_Plaintively._) That was a great man, young fellow, a great man I’m telling you. There was never a lamb from his own ewes he wouldn’t know before it was marked, and he’ld run from this to the city of Dublin and never catch for his breath. NORA. (_Turning round quickly._) He was a great man surely, stranger, and isn’t it a grand thing when you hear a living man saying a good word of a dead man, and he mad dying? TRAMP. It’s the truth I’m saying, God spare his soul. (_He puts the needle under the collar of his coat, and settles himself to sleep in the chimney-corner. Nora sits down at the table; their backs are turned to the bed._) MICHEAL. (_Looking at her with a queer look._) I heard tell this day, Nora Burke, that it was on the path below Patch Darcy would be passing up and passing down, and I heard them say he’ld never past it night or morning without speaking with yourself. NORA. (_In a low voice._) It was no lie you heard, Micheal Dara. MICHEAL. I’m thinking it’s a power of men you’re after knowing if it’s in a lonesome place you live itself. NORA. (_Giving him his tea._) It’s in a lonesome place you do have to be talking with some one, and looking for some one, in the evening of the day, and if it’s a power of men I’m after knowing they were fine men, for I was a hard child to please, and a hard girl to please (_she looks at him a little sternly_), and it’s a hard woman I am to please this day, Micheal Dara, and it’s no lie I’m telling you. MICHEAL. (_Looking over to see that the tramp is asleep, and then pointing to the dead man._) Was it a hard woman to please you were when you took himself for your man? NORA. What way would I live and I an old woman if I didn’t marry a man with a bit of a farm, and cows on it, and sheep on the back hills? MICHEAL. (_Considering._) That’s true, Nora, and maybe it’s no fool you were, for there’s good grazing on it, if it is a lonesome place, and I’m thinking it’s a good sum he’s left behind.