it's well I heard the little splash of the water you had there in
the can. Go on now, holy father, for if you're a fine Saint
itself, it's more sense is in a blind man, and more power maybe
than you're thinking at all. Let you walk on now with your worn
feet, and your welted knees, and your fasting, holy ways a thin
pitiful arm. (The Saint looks at him for a moment severely, then
turns away and picks up his can. He pulls Mary Doul up.) For if
it's a right some of you have to be working and sweating the like
of Timmy the smith, and a right some of you have to be fasting
and praying and talking holy talk the like of yourself, I'm
thinking it's a good right ourselves have to be sitting blind,
hearing a soft wind turning round the little leaves of the spring
and feeling the sun, and we not tormenting our souls with the
sight of the gray days, and the holy men, and the dirty feet is
trampling the world.

[He gropes towards his stone with Mary Doul.]

MAT SIMON. It'd be an unlucky fearful thing, I'm thinking, to
have the like of that man living near us at all in the townland
of Grianan. Wouldn't he bring down a curse upon us, holy father,
from the heavens of God?

SAINT -- [tying his girdle.] -- God has great mercy, but great
wrath for them that sin.

THE PEOPLE. Go on now, Martin Doul. Go on from this place. Let
you not be bringing great storms or droughts on us maybe from the
power of the Lord. [Some of them throw things at him.]