(All turn round and face him.)

BARTLEY.  To be going about with this fork and to find no one to take it, and no place to leave it down, and I wanting to be gone out of this—­Is that you, Shawn Early?

(Holds out fork.) It’s well I met you.  You have no call to be leaving the fair for a while the way I have, and how can I go till I’m rid of this fork?  Will you take it and keep it until such time as Jack Smith—­

SHAWN EARLY (backing).  I will not take it, Bartley Fallon, I’m very thankful to you!

BARTLEY (turning to apple stall).  Look at it now, Mrs. Tarpey, it was here I got it; let me thrust it in under the stall.  It will lie there safe enough, and no one will take notice of it until such time as Jack Smith—­

MRS. TARPEY.  Take your fork out of that!  Is it to put trouble on me and to destroy me you want? putting it there for the police to be rooting it out maybe.

(Thrusts him back.)

BARTLEY.  That is a very unneighborly thing for you to do, Mrs. Tarpey.  Hadn’t I enough care on me with that fork before this, running up and down with it like the swinging of a clock, and afeard to lay it down in any place!  I wish I’d never touched it or meddled with it at all!

JAMES RYAN.  It is a pity, indeed, you ever did.

BARTLEY.  Will you yourself take it, James Ryan?  You were always a neighborly man.

JAMES RYAN (backing).  There is many a thing I would do for you, Bartley Fallon, but I won’t do that!

SHAWN EARLY.  I tell you there is no man will give you any help or any encouragement for this day’s work.  If it was something agrarian now—­

BARTLEY.  If no one at all will take it, maybe it’s best to give it up to the police.

TIM CASEY.  There’d be a welcome for it with them surely!

(Laughter.)

MRS. TULLY.  And it is to the police Kitty Keary herself will be brought.

MRS. TARPEY (rocking to and fro).  I wonder now who will take the expense of the wake for poor Jack Smith?

BARTLEY.  The wake for Jack Smith!

TIM CASEY.  Why wouldn’t he get a wake as well as another?  Would you begrudge him that much?

BARTLEY.  Red Jack Smith dead!  Who was telling you?

SHAWN EARLY.  The whole town knows of it by this.

BARTLEY.  Do they say what way did he die?

JAMES RYAN.  You don’t know that yourself, I suppose, Bartley Fallon?  You don’t know he was followed and that he was laid dead with the stab of a hayfork?

BARTLEY.  The stab of a hayfork!

SHAWN EARLY.  You don’t know, I suppose, that the body was found in the Five-Acre Meadow?

BARTLEY.  The Five-Acre Meadow!

TIM CASEY.  It is likely you don’t know that the police are after the man that did it?

BARTLEY.  The man that did it!

MRS. TULLY.  You don’t know, maybe, that he was made away with for the sake of Kitty Keary, his wife?