(Enter TIM CASEY.)

TIM CASEY.  What is it, Mrs. Tarpey?  What happened since?

MRS. TARPEY.  O my poor Jack Smith!

TIM CASEY.  Did Bartley overtake him?

MRS. TARPEY.  O the poor man!

TIM CASEY.  Is it killed he is?

MRS. TARPEY.  Stretched in the Five-Acre Meadow!

TIM CASEY.  The Lord have mercy on us!  Is that a fact?

MRS. TARPEY.  Without the rites of the Church or a ha’porth!

TIM CASEY.  Who was telling you?

MRS. TARPEY.  And the wife laying out a sheet for his corpse. (Sits up and wipes her eyes.) I suppose they’ll wake him the same as another?

(Enter MRS. TULLY, SHAWN EARLY, and JAMES RYAN.)

MRS. TULLY.  There is great talk about this work in every quarter of the fair.

MRS. TARPEY.  Ochone! cold and dead.  And myself maybe the last he was speaking to!

JAMES RYAN.  The Lord save us!  Is it dead he is?

TIM CASEY.  Dead surely, and the wife getting provision for the wake.

SHAWN EARLY.  Well, now, hadn’t Bartley Fallon great venom in him?

MRS. TULLY.  You may be sure he had some cause.  Why would he have made an end of him if he had not? (To MRS. TARPEY, raising her voice) What was it rose the dispute at all, Mrs. Tarpey?

MRS. TARPEY.  Not a one of me knows.  The last I saw of them, Jack Smith was standing there, and Bartley Fallon was standing there, quiet and easy, and he listening to “The Red-haired Man’s Wife.”

MRS. TULLY.  Do you hear that, Tim Casey?  Do you hear that, Shawn Early and James Ryan?  Bartley Fallon was here this morning listening to red Jack Smith’s wife, Kitty Keary that was!  Listening to her and whispering with her!  It was she started the fight so!

SHAWN EARLY.  She must have followed him from her own house.  It is likely some person roused him.

TIM CASEY.  I never knew, before, Bartley Fallon was great with Jack Smith’s wife.

MRS. TULLY.  How would you know it?  Sure it’s not in the streets they would be calling it.  If Mrs. Fallon didn’t know of it, and if I that have the next house to them didn’t know of it, and if Jack Smith himself didn’t know of it, it is not likely you would know of it, Tim Casey.

SHAWN EARLY.  Let Bartley Fallon take charge of her from this out so, and let him provide for her.  It is little pity she will get from any person in this parish.

TIM CASEY.  How can he take charge of her?  Sure he has a wife of his own.  Sure you don’t think he’d turn souper and marry her in a Protestant church?

JAMES RYAN.  It would be easy for him to marry her if he brought her to America.

SHAWN EARLY.  With or without Kitty Keary, believe me, it is for America he’s making at this minute.  I saw the new magistrate and Jo Muldoon of the police going into the post-office as I came up—­there was hurry on them—­you may be sure it was to telegraph they went, the way he’ll be stopped in the docks at Queenstown!