[_He goes towards left. Mary sees that they are going, starts up suddenly, and turns over on her hands and knees._ MARY _piteously._—Where is it you’re going? Let you walk back here, and not be leaving me lonesome when the night is fine. SARAH Don’t be waking the world with your talk when we’re going up through the back wood to get two of Tim Flaherty’s hens are roosting in the ash-tree above at the well. MARY And it’s leaving me lone you are? Come back here, Sarah Casey. Come back here, I’m saying; or if it’s off you must go, leave me the two little coppers you have, the way I can walk up in a short while, and get another pint for my sleep. SARAH It’s too much you have taken. Let you stretch yourself out and take a long sleep; for isn’t that the best thing any woman can do, and she an old drinking heathen like yourself. [_She and Michael go out left._ MARY _standing up slowly._—It’s gone they are, and I with my feet that weak under me you’d knock me down with a rush, and my head with a noise in it the like of what you’d hear in a stream and it running between two rocks and rain falling. _(She goes over to the ditch where the can is tied in sacking, and takes it down.)_ What good am I this night, God help me? What good are the grand stories I have when it’s few would listen to an old woman, few but a girl maybe would be in great fear the time her hour was come, or a little child wouldn’t be sleeping with the hunger on a cold night? _(She takes the can from the sacking and fits in three empty bottles and straw in its place, and ties them up.)_ Maybe the two of them have a good right to be walking out the little short while they’d be young; but if they have itself, they’ll not keep Mary Byrne from her full pint when the night’s fine, and there’s a dry moon in the sky. _(She takes up the can, and puts the package back in the ditch.)_ Jemmy Neill’s a decent lad; and he’ll give me a good drop for the can; and maybe if I keep near the peelers to-morrow for the first bit of the fair, herself won’t strike me at all; and if she does itself, what’s a little stroke on your head beside sitting lonesome on a fine night, hearing the dogs barking, and the bats squeaking, and you saying over, it’s a short while only till you die. [_She goes out singing “The night before Larry was stretched.”_ CURTAIN ACT II. SCENE: _The same. Early morning. Sarah is washing her face in an old bucket; then plaits her hair. Michael is tidying himself also. Mary Byrne is asleep against the ditch._ SARAH _to Michael, with pleased excitement._—Go over, now, to the bundle beyond, and you’ll find a kind of a red handkerchief to put upon your neck, and a green one for myself. MICHAEL _getting them._—You’re after spending more money on the like of them. Well, it’s a power we’re losing this time, and we not gaining a thing at all. _(With the handkerchief.)_ Is it them two?