MARTIN DOUL.
bitterly. — Oh, God help me! (He begins taking off his coat.) I’ve heard tell you stripped the sheet from your wife and you putting her down into the grave, and that there isn’t the like of you for plucking your living ducks, the short days, and leaving them running round in their skins, in the great rains and the cold. (He tucks up his sleeves.) Ah, I’ve heard a power of queer things of yourself, and there isn’t one of them I’ll not believe from this day, and be telling to the boys.

TIMMY.
pulling over a big stick. — Let you cut that now, and give me rest from your talk, for I’m not heeding you at all.

MARTIN DOUL.
taking stick. — That’s a hard, terrible stick, Timmy; and isn’t it a poor thing to be cutting strong timber the like of that, when it’s cold the bark is, and slippy with the frost of the air?

TIMMY.
gathering up another armful of sticks. — What way wouldn’t it be cold, and it freezing since the moon was changed?

He goes into forge.

MARTIN DOUL.
querulously, as he cuts slowly. — What way, indeed, Timmy? For it’s a raw, beastly day we do have each day, till I do be thinking it’s well for the blind don’t be seeing them gray clouds driving on the hill, and don’t be looking on people with their noses red, the like of your nose, and their eyes weeping and watering, the like of your eyes, God help you, Timmy the smith.

TIMMY.
seen blinking in doorway. — Is it turning now you are against your sight?

MARTIN DOUL.
very miserably. — It’s a hard thing for a man to have his sight, and he living near to the like of you (he cuts a stick and throws it away), or wed with a wife (cuts a stick); and I do be thinking it should be a hard thing for the Almighty God to be looking on the world, bad days, and on men the like of yourself walking around on it, and they slipping each way in the muck.

TIMMY.
with pot-hooks which he taps on anvil. — You’d have a right to be minding, Martin Doul, for it’s a power the Saint cured lose their sight after a while. Mary Doul’s dimming again, I’ve heard them say; and I’m thinking the Lord, if he hears you making that talk, will have little pity left for you at all.

MARTIN DOUL.
There’s not a bit of fear of me losing my sight, and if it’s a dark day itself it’s too well I see every wicked wrinkle you have round by your eye.