McDonough:  (Trembling.) What is it?

First Hag: She is gone and she is not living.

McDonough: Is it to die she did? (Clutches her.)

First Hag: Yesterday, and the bells ringing, she turned her face to the south and died away.  It was at the hour of noon I knew and was aware she was gone.  A great loss it to be at the time of the fair, and all the lodgers that would have come into the house.

McDonough: It is not truth.  What would ail her to die?

First Hag: The makings of a child that came before its time, God save the mark!  She made a bad battle at the last.

McDonough: What way did it fail you to send me out messengers seeking me when you knew her to be done and dying?

First Hag: I thought she would drag another while.  There was no time for the priest itself to overtake her, or to put the little dress of the Virgin in her hand at the last gasp of death.

   McDonough goes into the room.  He comes out as if affrighted, leans
   his head against the wall, and breaks into a prayer in Irish:

"An Athair tha in Naomh, dean trocaire orainn!  A Dia Righ an Domhain, dean trocaire orainn!  A Mhuire Mathair Dia, dean trocaire orainn!"

Second Hag: (Venturing near.) Do not go fret after her, McDonough.  She could not go through the world forever, and travelling the world.  It might be that trouble went with her.

McDonough: Get out of that, you hags, you witches you!  You croaking birds of ill luck!  It is much if I will leave you in the living world, and you not to have held back death from her!

Second Hag: That you may never be cross till you will meet with your own death!  What way could any person do that?

McDonough: Get out the door and it will be best for you!

Second Hag: You are talking fool’s talk and giving out words that are foolishness!  There is no one at all can put away from his road the bones and the thinness of death.

McDonough: I to have been in it he would not have come under the lintel!  Ugly as he is and strong, I would be able for him and would wrestle with him and drag him asunder and put him down!  Before I would let him lay his sharp touch on her I would break and would crush his naked ribs, and would burn them to lime and scatter them!

First Hag: Where is the use raving?  It is best for you to turn your hand to the thing has to be done.

McDonough: You to have stood in his path he might have brought you away in her place!  That much would be no great thing to ask, and your life being dead and in ashes.

First Hag: Quieten yourself now where it was the will of God.  She herself made no outcry and no ravings.  I did my best for her, laying her out and putting a middling white sheet around her.  I went so far as to smoothen her hair on the two sides of her face.