n 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. 28

NORA {Taking the stocking with money from her pocket, and putting it on
the table.} I do be thinking in the long nights it was a big fool I was
that time, Micheal Dara, for what good is a bit of a farm with cows on
it, and sheep on the back hills, when you do be sitting looking out from
a door the like of that door, and seeing nothing but the mists rolling
down the bog, and the mists again, and they rolling up the bog, and
hearing nothing but the wind crying out in the bits of broken trees were
left from the great storm, and the streams roaring with the rain.

MICHEAL {Looking at her uneasily.} What is it ails you, this night, Nora
Burke? I've heard tell it's the like of that talk you do hear from men,
and they after being a great while on the back hills.

NORA {Putting out the money on the table.} It's a bad night, and a wild
night, Micheal Dara, and isn't it a great while I am at the foot of the
back hills, sitting up here boiling food for himself, and food for the
brood sow, and baking a cake when the night falls? {She puts up the
money, listlessly, in little piles on the table.} Isn't it a long while
I am sitting here in the winter and the summer, and the fine spring,
with the young growing behind me and the old passing, saying to myself
one time, to look on Mary Brien who wasn't that height {holding out
her hand}, and I a fine girl growing up, and there she is now with
two children, and another coming on her in three months or four. {She
pauses.}

MICHEAL {Moving over three of the piles.} That's three pounds we have
now, Nora Burke.

NORA {Continuing in the s