ce morning! Are you
starving?

OLD MAN. Oh, indeed, there was food to be got if I would take
it; but the bit that does not come from a willing heart, there would be
no taste on it; and that is what I did not get since morning; but people
putting a potato or a bit of bread out of the door to me, as if I was a
dog, with the hope I would not stop, but would go away.

MARY. Oh, sit down with us now, and eat with us. Bring him to
the table, Martin. (MARTIN _gives his hand to the old man, and
gives him a chair, and puts him sitting at the table with themselves. He
makes two halves of the cake, and gives a half to the blind man, and one
of the eggs. The old man eats eagerly._)

OLD MAN. I leave my seven hundred thousand blessings on the
people of this house. The blessing of God and Mary on them.

MARY. That it may be well with you. O Martin, that is the first
blessing I got in my own house. That blessing is better to me than gold.

OLD MAN. Aurah, is it not beautiful for people to have a house
of their own, and to have eyes to look about with?

MARTIN. May God preserve you, right man; it is likely it is a
poor thing to be without sight.

OLD MAN. You do not understand, nor any person that has his
sight, what it is to be blind and dark the way I am. Not to have before
you and behind you but the night. Oh, darkness, darkness! No shape or
form in anything; not to see the bird you hear singing in the tree over
your head; nor the flower you smell on the bush, or the child, and he
laughing in his mother's breast. The morning and the evening the day
and the night, only the same thing to you Oh, it is a poor thing to be
blind! (MARTIN _puts over the other half of the cake and the
egg to_ MARY, _and makes a sign to her to eat. She makes a sign
to him to take a share of them. The blind man stretches his hand over
the table to try for a crumb of bread, for he has eaten his own share;
and he gets hold of the other half cake and takes it._)

MARY. Eat that, poor man, it is likely there is hunger on you.
Here is another egg for you. (_She puts the other egg in his hand._)

BLIND MAN. The blessing of the Only Son and of the Holy Mother
on the hand that gives it. (MARTIN _puts up his two hands as if
dissatisfied; and he is going to say something when_ MARY
_takes the words from his mouth, laughing at his gloomy face._)

BLIND MAN. _Maisead_, my blessing on the mouth that laughter
came from, and my blessing on the light heart that