Jimmy It’s the last turn! The post’s cleared for them now!

Mahon Look at the narrow place. He’ll be into the bogs! (With a yell.) Good rider! He’s through it again!

Jimmy He neck and neck!

Mahon Good boy to him! Flames, but he’s in! (Great cheering, in which all join.)

Mahon (with hesitation). What’s that? They’re raising him up. They’re coming this way. (With a roar of rage and astonishment.) It’s Christy! by the stars of God! I’d know his way of spitting and he astride the moon.

He jumps down and makes for the door, but Widow Quin catches him and pulls him back.

Widow Quin Stay quiet, will you. That’s not your son. (To Jimmy.) Stop him, or you’ll get a month for the abetting of manslaughter and be fined as well.

Jimmy I’ll hold him.

Mahon (struggling). Let me out! Let me out, the lot of you! till I have my vengeance on his head to-day.

Widow Quin (shaking him, vehemently). That’s not your son. That’s a man is going to make a marriage with the daughter of this house, a place with fine trade, with a license, and with poteen too.

Mahon (amazed). That man marrying a decent and a moneyed girl! Is it mad yous are? Is it in a crazy- house for females that I’m landed now?

Widow Quin It’s mad yourself is with the blow upon your head. That lad is the wonder of the Western World.

Mahon I seen it’s my son.

Widow Quin You seen that you’re mad. (Cheering outside.) Do you hear them cheering him in the zig- zags of the road? Aren’t you after saying that your son’s a fool, and how would they be cheering a true idiot born?

Mahon (getting distressed). It’s maybe out of reason that that man’s himself. (Cheering again.) There’s none surely will go cheering him. Oh, I’m raving with a madness that would fright the world! (He sits down with his hand to his head.) There was one time I seen ten scarlet divils letting on they’d cork my spirit in a gallon can; and one time I seen rats as big as badgers sucking the life blood from the butt of my lug; but I never till this day confused that dribbling idiot with a likely man. I’m destroyed surely.

Widow Quin And who’d wonder when it’s your brain-pan that is gaping now?

Mahon Then the blight of the sacred drought upon myself and him, for I never went mad to this day, and I not three weeks with the Limerick girls drinking myself silly, and parlatic from the dusk to dawn. (To Widow Quin, suddenly.) Is my visage astray?

Widow Quin It is then. You’re a sniggering maniac, a child could see.

Mahon (getting up more cheerfully). Then I’d best be going to the union beyond, and there’ll be a welcome before me, I tell you (with great pride), and I a terrible and fearful case, the way that there I was one time, screeching in a straightened waistcoat, with seven doctors writing out my sayings in a printed book. Would you believe that?