It's no lie he's telling, I was destroyed surely. They were that
wilful they were running off into one man's bit of oats, and
another man's bit of hay, and tumbling into the red bogs till
it's more like a pack of old goats than sheep they were.
Mountain ewes is a queer breed, Nora Burke, and I'm not used to
them at all.

NORA
[Settling the tea things.] There's no one can drive a mountain
ewe but the men do be reared in the Glen Malure, I've heard them
say, and above by Rathvanna, and the Glen Imaal, men the like of
Patch Darcy, God spare his soul, who would walk through five
hundred sheep and miss one of them, and he not reckoning them at
all.

MICHEAL
[Uneasily.] Is it the man went queer in his head the year that's
gone?

NORA
It is surely.

TRAMP
[Plaintively.] That was a great man, young fellow, a great man
I'm telling you. There was never a lamb from his own ewes he
wouldn't know before it was marked, and he'ld run from this to
the city of Dublin and never catch for his breath.

NORA
[Turning round quickly.] He was a great man surely, stranger, and