Don't strike me ... I killed my poor father, Tuesday was a week, for doing the like of that.

PEGEEN with blank amazement. Is it killed your father?

CHRISTY subsiding. With the help of God I did surely, and that the Holy Immaculate Mother may intercede for his soul.

PHILLY retreating with Jimmy. There's a daring fellow.

JIMMY. Oh, glory be to God!

MICHAEL with great respect. That was a hanging crime, mister honey. You should have had good reason for doing the like of that.

CHRISTY in a very reasonable tone. He was a dirty man, God forgive him, and he getting old and crusty, the way I couldn't put up with him at all.

PEGEEN. And you shot him dead?

CHRISTY shaking his head. I never used weapons. I've no licence, and I'm a law-fearing man.

MICHAEL. It was with a hilted knife maybe? I'm told, in the big world, it's bloody knives they use.

CHRISTY loudly, scandalized. Do you take me for a slaughter-boy?

PEGEEN. You never hanged him, the way Jimmy Farrell hanged his dog from the licence and had it screeching and wriggling three hours at the butt of a string, and himself swearing it was a dead dog, and the peelers swearing it had life?

CHRISTY. I did not then. I just riz the loy and let fall the edge of it on the ridge of his skull, and he went down at my feet like an empty sack, and never let a grunt or groan from him at all.

MICHAEL making a sign to Pegeen to fill Christy's glass. And what way weren't you hanged, mister? Did you bury him then?

CHRISTY considering. Aye. I buried him then. Wasn't I digging spuds in the field?

MICHAEL. And the peelers never followed after you the eleven days that you're out?

CHRISTY shaking his head. Never a one of them and I walking forward facing hog, dog, or divil on the highway of the road.

PHILLY nodding wisely. It's only with a common week-day kind of a murderer them lads would be trusting their carcase, and that man should be a great terror when his temper's roused.

MICHAEL. He should then. To Christy. And where was it, mister honey, that you did the deed?

CHRISTY looking at him with suspicion. Oh, a distant place, master of the house, a windy corner of high distant hills.

PHILLY nodding with approval. He's a close man and he's right surely.

PEGEEN. That'd be a lad with the sense of Solomon to have for a potboy, Michael James, if it's the truth you're seeking one at all.

PHILLY.