GRIPES
It is, sir.

MUSKERRY I find it very spiritless after coming up from the chapel.  Don’t pass your whole day here.  Go down into the yard. (He stands before the window) This is the first fine day, and you ought to go out along the country road.  Ask the Master for leave.  It’s the month of May, and you’ll be glad of the sight of the grass and the smell of the bushes.  Now here’s a remarkable thing.  I venture to think that the like of this has never happened before.  Here are the bees swarming at the window pane.

GORMAN
You’ll hear my pipes on the road to-day.  That’s as sure as
the right hand is on my body. (He goes out by corridor door)

CRIPES
Myles Gorman must have been glad to hear that buzzing.

MUSKERRY
Why was Myles glad to hear it?

SHANLEY
He was leaving on the first fine day.

CRIPES
The buzzing at the pane would let any one know that the air
is nice for a journey.

MUSKERRY
I am leaving to-day, myself.

CRIPES
And where are you going, Mr. Muskerry?

MUSKERRY
I’m going to a place of my own.

  Muskerry goes into the Select Ward.

CRIPES I’ll tell you what brought Thomas Muskerry back to the workhouse to be an inmate in it.  Living in a bad house.  Living with his own.  That’s what brought him back.  And that’s what left me here, too.

SHANLEY (listlessly) The others have the flour, and we may hawk the bran.

  An old pauper comes into the ward.  His face looks bleached.  He has
  the handle of a sweeping-brush for a staff.  He moves about the ward,
  muttering to himself.  He seats himself on chair, right.

THE OLD MAN (speaking as if thinking aloud) I was at twelve o’clock Mass.  Now one o’clock would be a late Mass.  I was at Mass at one o’clock.  Wouldn’t that be a long time to keep a priest, and he fasting the whole time?

CRIPES I’ll tell you what Thomas Muskerry did when he left the bad house he was in. (He puts coal on the fire)

THE OLD MAN I was at one o’clock Mass in Skibbereen.  I know where Skibbereen is well.  In the County Cork.  Cork is a big county.  As big as Dublin and Wicklow.  That’s where the people died when there was the hunger.

CRIPES He came before the meeting of the Guardians, and he told them he owed them the whole of his year’s pension.  Then he got some sort of a stroke, and he broke down.  And the Guardians gave him the Select Ward there for himself.

SHANLEY
They did well for him.

CRIPES Why wouldn’t they give him the Select Ward?  It’s right that he’d get the little room, and not have to make down the pauper’s bed with the rest of us.

SHANLEY He was at the altar to-day, and he stayed in the chapel after Mass.

CRIPES
He’ll be here shortly.

THE OLD MAN Skibbereen!  That’s where the people died when there was the hunger.  Men and women without coffins, or even their clothes off.  Just buried.  Skibbereen I remember well, for I was a whole man then.  And the village.  For there are people living in it yet.  They didn’t all die.