JIMMY. It’s the last turn! The post’s cleared for them now! MAHON. Look at the narrow place. He’ll be into the bogs! (_With a yell._) Good rider! He’s through it again! JIMMY. He’s neck and neck! MAHON. Good boy to him! Flames, but he’s in! [_Great cheering, in which all join._] MAHON. _with hesitation._—What’s that? They’re raising him up. They’re coming this way. (_With a roar of rage and astonishment._) It’s Christy! by the stars of God! I’d know his way of spitting and he astride the moon. [_He jumps down and makes for the door, but Widow Quin catches him and pulls him back._] WIDOW QUIN. Stay quiet, will you. That’s not your son. (_To Jimmy._) Stop him, or you’ll get a month for the abetting of manslaughter and be fined as well. JIMMY. I’ll hold him. MAHON. _struggling._—Let me out! Let me out, the lot of you! till I have my vengeance on his head to-day. WIDOW QUIN. _shaking him, vehemently._—That’s not your son. That’s a man is going to make a marriage with the daughter of this house, a place with fine trade, with a license, and with poteen too. MAHON. _amazed._—That man marrying a decent and a moneyed girl! Is it mad yous are? Is it in a crazy-house for females that I’m landed now? WIDOW QUIN. It’s mad yourself is with the blow upon your head. That lad is the wonder of the Western World. MAHON. I seen it’s my son. WIDOW QUIN. You seen that you’re mad. (_Cheering outside._) Do you hear them cheering him in the zig-zags of the road? Aren’t you after saying that your son’s a fool, and how would they be cheering a true idiot born? MAHON. _getting distressed._—It’s maybe out of reason that that man’s himself. (_Cheering again._) There’s none surely will go cheering him. Oh, I’m raving with a madness that would fright the world! (_He sits down with his hand to his head._) There was one time I seen ten scarlet divils letting on they’d cork my spirit in a gallon can; and one time I seen rats as big as badgers sucking the life blood from the butt of my lug; but I never till this day confused that dribbling idiot with a likely man. I’m destroyed surely. WIDOW QUIN. And who’d wonder when it’s your brain-pan that is gaping now? MAHON. Then the blight of the sacred drought upon myself and him, for I never went mad to this day, and I not three weeks with the Limerick girls drinking myself silly, and parlatic from the dusk to dawn. (_To Widow Quin, suddenly._) Is my visage astray? WIDOW QUIN. It is then. You’re a sniggering maniac, a child could see. MAHON. _getting up more cheerfully._—Then I’d best be going to the union beyond, and there’ll be a welcome before me, I tell you (_with great pride_), and I a terrible and fearful case, the way that there I was one time, screeching in a straightened waistcoat, with seven doctors writing out my sayings in a printed book. Would you believe that?