Part 15 (1/2)

_Aloysius._ That's just it. If he did cure her, they say the two best of her husband's bullocks died of the blackwater the next day, and he was no way thankful to us after that.

_Colman._ Did you try the houses along the bog road?

_Aloysius._ I did, and the children coming back from school called out after me and asked who was it did away with the widow Cloran's cow.

_Colman._ The widow Cloran's cow?

_Aloysius._ That was the cow that died after grazing in the ruins here.

_Colman._ If it did, it was because of an old boot it picked up and ate, and that never belonged to us.

_Aloysius._ I wish we had something ourselves to eat. They should be sitting down to their dinner in the monastery now. They will be having a good dinner to-day to carry them over the fast to-morrow.

_Colman._ I am thinking sometimes, Brother Paul should give more thought to us than he does. It is all very well for him, he is so taken up with his thoughts and his visions he doesn't know if he is full or fasting.

_Aloysius._ He has such holy thoughts and visions no one would like to trouble him. He ought not to be in the world at all, or to do the world's work.

_Colman._ So long as he is in the world, he must give some thought to it. There must be something wrong in the way he is doing things now. I thought he would have had half Ireland with him by this time with his great preaching, but someway when he preaches to the people, they don't seem to mind him much.

_Aloysius._ He is too far above them; they have not education to understand him.

_Colman._ They understand me well enough when I give my mind to it. But it is harder to preach now than it was in the monastery. We had something to offer then; absolution here, and heaven after.

_Aloysius._ Isn't it enough for them to hear that the kingdom of heaven is within them, and that if they do the right meditations----

_Colman._ What can poor people that have their own troubles on them get from a few words like that they hear at a cross road or a market, and the wind maybe blowing them away? If we could gather them together now.... Look, Aloysius, at these sally rods; I have a plan in my mind about them.

[_He has stuck some of the rods in the ground, and begins weaving others through them._

_Aloysius._ Are you going to make baskets like you did in the monastery schools?

_Colman._ We must make something if we are to live. But it is more than that I was thinking of; we might coax some of the youngsters to come and learn the basket making; it would make them take to us better if we could put them in the way of earning a few pence.

_Aloysius._ [_Taking up some of the osiers and beginning to twist them._] That might be a good way to come at them; they could work through the day, and at evening we could tell them how to repeat the words till the light comes inside their heads. But would Paul think well of it? He is more for pulling down than building up.

_Colman._ When I explain it to him I am sure he will think well of it; he can't go on for ever without anyone to listen to him.

_Aloysius._ I suppose not, and with no way of living. But I don't know, I'm afraid he won't like it.

_Colman._ Hus.h.!.+ Here he is coming.

_Aloysius._ If one had a plan now for doing some destruction----

_Colman._ Hus.h.!.+ don't you see there is somebody with him.

PAUL RUTTLEDGE _comes in with_ CHARLIE WARD.

_Paul Ruttledge._ This is Charlie Ward, my old friend.

_Aloysius._ The Charlie Ward you lived on the roads with?