_(Takes plate. John stuffs a cushion into window pane and picks up MSS.)_

_John:_ Are these belonging to you, Mr. Mineog?

_Mineog:_ Let you throw them on the coals of the fire, where we have no use for them presently.

_Hazel: (Stopping John and taking them.)_ Thursday is very near at hand. Two empty columns is a large s.p.a.ce to go fill.

_Mineog:_ Indeed I am feeling no way fit to go writing columns.

_Hazel: (Putting his MS. in his pocket.)_ There is nothing ails them only to begin a good way after the start, and to stop before the finish.

_Mineog: (Putting his MS. in his pocket.)_ We'll do that. We can put such part of them as we do not need at this time back in the shelf of the press.

_Hazel: (Filling gla.s.ses and lifting his.)_ That it may be long before they will be needed!

_Mineog: (Lifting gla.s.s.)_ That they may _never_ be needed!

_Curtain_

DAMER'S GOLD

A COMEDY IN TWO ACTS

PERSONS

_Patrick Kirwan_ CALLED DAMER _Staffy Kirwan_ HIS BROTHER _Delia Hessian_ HIS SISTER _Ralph Hessian_ HER HUSBAND _Simon Niland_ THEIR NEPHEW

DAMER'S GOLD

ACT I

_Scene: The kitchen in Damer's house. Outer door at back. Door leading to an inner room to right. A dresser, a table, and a couple of chairs. An old coat and hat hanging on the wall. A knocking is heard at door at back. It is unlatched from outside. Delia comes in_.

_Delia: (Looking round cautiously and going back to door.)_ You may come in, Staffy and Ralph. There would seem to be no person here.

_Staffy:_ Take care would Damer ask us to cross the threshold at all. I would not ask to go pushing on him, but to wait till he would call to us himself. He is not an easy led man.

_Delia: (Crossing and knocking at inner door.)_ He is not in it.

He is likely slipped out unknownst.

_Ralph:_ Herself that thought to find him at the brink of death and nearing his last leap, after what happened him with the jennet.

We heard tell of it as far as we were.

_Delia:_ What ailed him to go own a jennet, he that has means to stable a bay horse would set the windows rattling on the public road, and it sparkling over the flintstones after dark?

_Staffy:_ Sure he owns no fourfooted beast only the dog abroad in its box. To make its way into the haggard the jennet did, the time it staggered him with a kick. To forage out some grazing it thought to do, beyond dirt and scutchgra.s.s among the stones. Very cross jennets do be, as it is a cross man it met with.

_Delia:_ A queer sort of a brother he is. To go searching Ireland you wouldn't find queerer. But as soon as I got word what happened I bade Ralph to put the tacklings on the a.s.s. We must have nature about us some way. There was silence between us long enough.

_Ralph:_ She was thinking it might be the cause of him getting his death sooner than G.o.d has it promised to him, and that it might turn his mind more friendly like towards us, he knowing us to be at hand for to settle out his burying.

_Delia:_ Why wouldn't it, and we being all the brothers and sisters ever he had, since Jane Niland, G.o.d rest her soul, went out last Little Christmas from the troubles and torments of the world.

_Staffy:_ There is nothing left of that marriage now, only one young lad is said to be mostly a fool.

_Delia:_ It is ourselves can bear witness to that, where he came into the house ere yesterday, having no way of living, since death and misfortune scattered him, but as if he was left down out of the skies.

_Ralph:_ He has not, unless the pound piece the mother put into his hand at the last. It is much she had that itself. The time Tom Niland died from her, he didn't leave her hardly the cat.

_Staffy:_ The lad to have any wit around him he would have come travelling hither along with yourselves, to see would he knock any kindness out of Damer.

_Ralph:_ It is what herself was saying, it would be no advantage to him to be coming here at all, he being as he is half light, where there is nothing only will or wit could pick any profit out of Damer.

She did not let on to him what side were we facing, and we travelling out from Loughtysha.s.sy.

_Staffy:_ It is likely he will get tidings as good as yourself. It is said, and said largely, Damer has a full gallon jar of gold.

_Ralph:_ There is no one could lift it--G.o.d bless it--they were telling me. Filled up it is and brimmed to the very brink.

_Staffy:_ His heart and his soul gone into it. He is death on that gallon of gold.

_Delia:_ He would give leave to the poorhouse to bury him, if he could but put in his will they should leave it down with his bones.

_Staffy:_ A man could live an easy life surely and that much being in the house.

_Delia:_ There is no more grasping man within the four walls of the world. A strange thing he turning to be so ugly and p.r.o.ne to misery, where he was reared along with myself. I have the first covetous person yet to meet I would like! I never would go thrusting after gold, I to get all Lord Clanricarde's estate.

_Ralph:_ She never would, only at a time she might have her own means spent and consumed.

_Staffy:_ The house is very racked beside what it was. The hungriest cabin in the whole ring of Connemara would not show out so empty and so bare.

_Delia: (Taking up a jug.)_ No sign in this vessel of anything that would leave a sign. I'll go bail he takes his tea in a black state, and the milk to be rotting in the churn.

_Ralph: (Handling a coat and hat hanging on a nail.)_ That's a queer cut of a hat. That now should have been a good top-coat in its time.

_Delia:_ For pity's sake! That is the top-coat and the hat he used to be wearing and he riding his long-tailed pony to every racecourse from this to the Curragh of Kildare. A good cla.s.s of cloth it should be to last out through seventeen years.

_Staffy:_ The time he was young and fundless he had not a bad reaching hand. He never was thrifty but lavish till he came into the ownership of the land. It is as if his luck left him, he growing timid at the time he had means to lose.