You're one of the tinkers, young fellow, is beyond camped in the glen?

CHRISTY. I am not; but I'm destroyed walking.

MICHAEL patronizingly. Let you come up then to the fire. You're looking famished with the cold.

CHRISTY. God reward you. He takes up his glass, and goes a little way across to the left, then stops and looks about him. Is it often the polis do be coming into this place, master of the house?

MICHAEL. If you'd come in better hours, you'd have seen »Licensed for the Sale of Beer and Spirits, to be consumed on the Premises,« written in white letters above the door, and what would the polis want spying on me, and not a decent house within four miles, the way every living Christian is a bona fide saving one widow alone?

CHRISTY with relief. It's a safe house, so. He goes over to the fire, sighing and moaning. Then he sits down putting his glass beside him and begins gnawing a turnip, too miserable to feel the others staring at him with curiosity.

MICHAEL going after him. Is it yourself is fearing the polis? You're wanting, maybe?

CHRISTY. There's many wanting.

MICHAEL. Many surely, with the broken harvest and the ended wars. He picks up some stockings etc. that are near the fire, and carries them away furtively. It should be larceny, I'm thinking?

CHRISTY dolefully. I had it in my mind it was a different word and a bigger.

PEGEEN. There's a queer lad! Were you never slapped in school, young fellow, that you don't know the name of your deed?

CHRISTY bashfully. I'm slow at learning, a middling scholar only.

MICHAEL. If you're a dunce itself, you'd have a right to know that larceny's robbing and stealing. Is it for the like of that you're wanting?

CHRISTY with a flash of family pride. And I the son of a strong farmer with a sudden qualm, God rest his soul, could have bought up the whole of your old house a while since from the butt of his tail- pocket and not have missed the weight of it gone.

MICHAEL impressed. If it's not stealing, it's maybe something big.

CHRISTY flattered. Aye; it's maybe something big.

JIMMY. He's a wicked-looking young fellow. Maybe he followed after a young woman on a lonesome night.

CHRISTY shocked. Oh, the saints forbid, mister. I was all times a decent lad.

PHILLY turning on Jimmy. You're a silly man, Jimmy Farrell.