Ruttledge. I can't make head or tail of what you are at.

Colonel Lawley. What he is at is fads.

Mr. Green. I don't think his motive is far to seek. He has some idea of going back to the dark ages. Rousseau had some idea of the same kind, but it didn't work.

Paul Ruttledge. Yes; I want to go back to the dark ages.

Mr. Green. Do you want to lose all the world has gained since then?

Paul Ruttledge. What has it gained? I am among those who think that sin and death came into the world the day Newton eat the apple. [To Mrs. Ruttledge, who is going to speak.] I know you are going to tell me he only saw it fall. Never mind, it is all the same thing.

Mrs. Ruttledge. [Beginning to cry.] Oh! he is going mad!

Mr. Joyce. I'm afraid he is really leaving us.

Paul Ruttledge. [Who has been looking at papers, tearing one or two, etc., takes out a packet of notes, which he puts in his breast.] I daresay this will last me long enough, Thomas. I am not robbing you of very much. Well, good-bye. [Pats him gently on the shoulder.] I mustn't forget the rabbit, it may be my dinner to-night; I wonder who will skin it. Good-bye, Colonel, I think I've astonished you to-day. [Slaps his shoulder.] That was too hard, was it? Forgive it, you know I'm a common man now. [Lifts his hat and goes out of gate. Closes it after him and stands with his hands on it, and speaks with the voice of a common man.] Go on, live in your poultry-yard. Scratch straw and cluck and cackle at everything that you take for a fox. [Exit.

Mr. Joyce. [Goes to Mrs. Ruttledge, who has sat down and is wiping her eyes.] I am very sorry for this, for his father's sake, but it may be as well in the end. If it comes to the worst, you and Thomas will keep up the family name better than he would have done.

Mr. Dowler. He'll find the poor very different from what he thinks when they pick his pocket.

Colonel Lawley. To think that a magistrate should have such fads!

Mr. Green. I venture to say you will see him here in a very different state of mind in a week.

Mr. Algie. [Who has been in a brown study.] He has done for himself in this world and the next. Why, he won't be asked to a single shoot if this is heard of.

Thomas Ruttledge. [Turning from the gate.] Here are the children, Georgina. Don't say anything before the nurse.

Mr. Green. Well, I must be off. [Goes in for stick.

Mr. Joyce. Just bring me out my coat, Green.

Mr. Joyce. Have you a kiss for godfather to-day?

Mrs. Ruttledge. The poor darlings! I hope they will never know what has happened.

Colonel Lawley. Thank goodness, they have no nonsense in their heads. We know where we are with them.

Curtain.

ACT II.

Paul Ruttledge. What do you mean by "tinning" the soldering iron?

Charlie Ward. If the face of it is not well tinned it won't lift the solder. Show me here.

Paul Ruttledge. [Sitting down and drawing a tin can to him.] Now, let me see how you mend this hole. It seems easy. I'm sure I will be able to learn it as well as any of you.

[Two tinkers come and stand over him.

Charlie Ward. [Pointing to one of them.] This, sir, is Tommy the Song. He's the best singer we have, but the divil a much good he is only that. He's a great warrant to snare hares.

Tommy the Song. Is the gentleman going to join us?

Paul Ruttledge. Indeed I am, if you'll let me. There's nothing I'd like better.

Tommy the Song. But are you going to learn the trade?

Paul Ruttledge. Yes, if you'll teach me. I'm sure I'll make a good tinker. Look at that now, see how I've stopped that hole already.

Charlie Ward. [Taking the can from him and looking at it.] If every can had a little hole in the middle like that, I think you would be able to mend them; but there's the straight hole, and the crooked hole, the round hole, the square hole, the angle hole, the bottom hole, the top hole, the side leak, the open leak, the leak-all-round, but I won't frighten you with the names of them all, only this I will say, that, when you've learned to mend all the leakages in a can—and that should take you a year—you're only in the first day of the tinker's week.

Tommy the Song. Don't believe him. He's only humbugging you. It's not the hardness of the work will daunt you.

Paul Ruttledge. Thank you. I was not believing him at all. I'm quite sure I'll be able to mend any can at the end of a week, but the bottoming of them will take longer. I can see that's not so easy. When will you start to teach me that, Charlie?

Charlie Ward. [As another tinker comes up.] Paddy, here's the gentleman I was telling you about. He's going to join us for good and all. [To Paul Ruttledge.] Wait till we have time and some quiet place, and he'll show you as good a cockfight as ever you saw. [A woman comes up.] This is his wife; Molly the Scold we call her; faith, she is a better fighter than any cock he ever had in a basket; he'd find it hard to shut the lid on her.

Molly the Scold. The gentleman seems foolish. Is he all there?

Paddy Cockfight. Stop your chat, Molly, or I'll hit you a welt.

Charlie Ward. Keep your tongue quiet, Molly. If the gentleman has reasons for keeping out of the way it isn't for us to be questioning him. [To Paul Ruttledge.] Don't mind her, she's cross enough, but maybe your own ladies would be cross as well if they saw their young sons dying by the roadside in a little kennel of straw under the ass-cart the way she did; from first to last.

Paul Ruttledge. I suppose you have your troubles like others. But you seem cheerful enough.

Charlie Ward. It isn't anything to fret about. Some of us go soon, and some travel the roads for their lifetime. What does it matter when we are under the nettles if it was with a short rope or a long one we were hanged?

Paul Ruttledge. Yes, that is the way to take life. What does the length of our rope matter?

Charlie Ward. We haven't time to be thinking of troubles like people that would be shut up in a house. We have the wide world before us to make our living out of. The people of the whole world are begrudging us our living, and we make it out of them for all that. When they will spread currant cakes and feather beds before us, it will be time for us to sit down and fret.

Tommy the Song. It's likely