It is about eight o'clock in the evening of a bitter cold day in late February of the year 1912.
As the curtain rises, Bill Carmody is discovered fitting in a rocker by the stove, reading a newspaper and smoking a blackened clay pipe. He is a man of fifty, heavy-set and round-shouldered, with long muscular arms and swollen-veined, hairy hands.
His face is bony and ponderous; his nose short and squat; his mouth large, thick-lipped and harsh;his complexion mottled—red, purple-streaked, and freckled; his hair, short and stubby with a bald spot on the crown. The expression of his small, blue eyes is one of selfish cunning. His voice is loud and hoarse.He wears a flannel shirt, open at the neck, crisscrossed by red braces; black, baggy trousers grey with dust; muddy brogues.