MARTIN DOUL.
There’s the little path going up through the sloughs.... If we reached the bank above, where the elders do be growing, no person would see a sight of us, if it was a hundred yeomen were passing itself; but I’m afeard after the time we were with our sight we’ll not find our way to it at all.
MARY DOUL.
standing up. — You’d find the way, surely. You’re a grand man the world knows at finding your way winter or summer, if there was deep snow in it itself, or thick grass and leaves, maybe, growing from the earth.
MARTIN DOUL.
taking her hand. — Come a bit this way; it’s here it begins. (They grope about gap.) There’s a tree pulled into the gap, or a strange thing happened, since I was passing it before.
MARY DOUL.
Would we have a right to be crawling in below under the sticks?
MARTIN DOUL.
It’s hard set I am to know what would be right. And isn’t it a poor thing to be blind when you can’t run off itself, and you fearing to see?
MARY DOUL.
nearly in tears. — It’s a poor thing, God help us, and what good’ll our gray hairs be itself, if we have our sight, the way we’ll see them falling each day, and turning dirty in the rain?
[The bell sounds nearby.]
MARTIN DOUL.
in despair. — He’s coming now, and we won’t get off from him at all.
MARY DOUL.
Could we hide in the bit of a briar is growing at the west butt of the church?
MARTIN DOUL.
We’ll try that, surely. (He listens a moment.) Let you make haste; I hear them trampling in the wood.