it with their own naked hands and bought their first spade out of
their first crop of potatoes. Talk of making two blades of wheat
grow where one grew before! those two men made a whole field of
wheat grow where not even a furze bush had ever got its head up
between the stones.

BROADBENT. That was magnificent, you know. Only a great race is
capable of producing such men.

LARRY. Such fools, you mean! What good was it to them? The moment
they'd done it, the landlord put a rent of 5 pounds a year on
them, and turned them out because they couldn't pay it.

AUNT JUDY. Why couldn't they pay as well as Billy Byrne that took
it after them?

LARRY [angrily]. You know very well that Billy Byrne never paid
it. He only offered it to get possession. He never paid it.

AUNT JUDY. That was because Andy Haffigan hurt him with a brick
so that he was never the same again. Andy had to run away to
America for it.

BROADBENT [glowing with indignation]. Who can blame him, Miss
Doyle? Who can blame him?

LARRY [impatiently]. Oh, rubbish! What's the good of the man
that's starved out of a farm murdering the man that's starved
into it? Would you have done such a thing?