CATHLEEN (begins to keen).  It’s destroyed we are from this day.  It’s destroyed, surely.

NORA.  Didn’t the young priest say the Almighty God wouldn’t leave her destitute with no son living?

MAUKYA (in a low voice, but clearly).  It’s little the like of him knows of the sea....  Bartley will be lost now, and let you call in Eamon and make me a good coffin out of the white boards, for I won’t live after them.  I’ve had a husband, and a husband’s father, and six sons in this house—­six fine men, though it was a hard birth I had with every one of them and they coming to the world—­and some of them were found and some of them were not found, but they’re gone now, the lot of them....  There were Stephen, and Shawn, were lost in the great wind, and found after in the Bay of Gregory of the Golden Mouth, and carried up the two of them on the one plank, and in by that door.

(She pauses for a moment, the girls start as if they heard something through the door that is half-open behind them.)

NORA (in a whisper).  Did you hear that, Cathleen?  Did you hear a noise in the northeast?

CATHLEEN (in a whisper).  There’s someone after crying out by the seashore.

MAURYA (continues without hearing anything).  There was Sheamus and his father, and his own father again, were lost in a dark night, and not a stick or sign was seen of them when the sun went up.  There was Patch after was drowned out of a curagh that turned over.  I was sitting here with Bartley, and he a baby, lying on my two knees, and I seen two women, and three women, and four women coming in, and they crossing themselves, and not saying a word.  I looked out then, and there were men coming after them, and they holding a thing in the half of a red sail, and water dripping out of it—­it was a dry day, Nora—­and leaving a track to the door.

(She pauses again with her hand stretched out towards the door.  It opens softly and old women begin to come in, crossing themselves on the threshold, and kneeling down in front of the stage with red petticoats over their heads.)

MAURYA (half in a dream, to Cathleen).  Is it Patch, or Michael, or what is it at all?

CATHLEEN.  Michael is after being found in the far north, and when he is found there how could he be here in this place?

MAURYA.  There does be a power of young men floating round in the sea, and what way would they know if it was Michael they had, or another man like him, for when a man is nine days in the sea, and the wind blowing, it’s hard set his own mother would be to say what man was it.

CATHLEEN.  It’s Michael, God spare him, for they’re after sending us a bit of his clothes from the far north.

(She reaches out and hands MAURYA the clothes that belonged to MICHAEL.  MAURYA stands up slowly, and takes them in her hands. NORA looks out.)