be going hungry and bare. How do I know what troop
might be bearing witness against me before the gate of heaven? To be
cherishing a ravenous beast might be setting his teeth in their limbs!
To give charity to the poor is the best religion in Ireland. Didn't
our Lord Himself go beg through three and thirty years? _(He goes.)_

_Delia: (Coming forward.)_ Will you believe me now telling you he
is gone unsteady in the head?

_Staffy:_ I see no other sign. He is a gone man surely. His
understanding warped and turned backward. To see him blighted the
way he is would stir the heart of a stone.

_Ralph:_ He surely got some vision or some warning, or there lit
on him a fit or a stroke.

_Staffy:_ Twice a child and only once a man. He is turned to be
innocent with age.

_Ralph:_ It would be a bad thing he to meet with his death unknown
to us.

_Delia:_ It would be worse again he that is gone out of his
latitude to be brought away to the asylum.

_Ralph:_ I don't know.

_Delia:_ But I know. He to die, and to make no will, it is
ourselves, by rule and by right, that would lay claim to his wealth.

_Staffy:_ So we could do that, and he to come to his end in the
bad place, God save the mark!

_Delia:_ Would you say there would be no fear the Government might
stretch out and take charge of it, saying him to be outside of his
reason?

_Ralph:_ That would be the worst of all. We to be forced to hire
an attorney against them, till we would break one another at law.

_Delia:_ He to be stopping here, and being light in the brain, it
is likely some thief travelling the road might break his way in and
sweep all.

_Ralph:_ It would be right for us keep some sort of a watch on it.

_Staffy:_ What way would we be sitting here watching it, the same
as a hen on a pebble of flint, through a quarter or it might be
three quarters of a year? He might drag for a good while yet, and
live and linger into old days.

_Delia:_ To take some cross turn he might, and to come at us
violent and maybe tear the flesh from our bones.

_Staffy:_ It is best for us do nothing so, but to leave it to the
foreknowledge of God.

_Delia:_ There is but the one thing to do. To bring it away out of
this and to lodge it within in my own house. We can settle out a
place under the hearth.

_Staffy:_ We can make a right division of it at such time as the
end will come.

_Ralph:_ What way now will we bring away the crock?

_Delia:_ Let you go outsid