class="sc">Martin. I wonder if that is the great thing, to make the world go on. No, I don't think that is the great thing ... what does the Munster poet call it ... "this crowded slippery coach-loving world." I don't think I was told to work for that.

Andrew. I often thought that myself. It is a pity the stock of the Hearnes to be asked to do any work at all.

Thomas. Rouse yourself, Martin, and don't be talking the way a fool talks. You started making that golden coach, and you were set upon it, and you had me tormented about it. You have yourself wore out working at it and planning it and thinking of it, and at the end of the race, when you have the winning post in sight, and horses hired for to bring it to Dublin Castle, you go falling into sleeps and blathering about dreams, and we run to a great danger of letting the profit and the sale go by. Sit down on the bench now, and lay your hands to the work.

Martin [sitting down]. I will try. I wonder why I ever wanted to make it; it was no good dream set me doing that. [He takes up wheel.] What is there in a wooden wheel to take pleasure in it? Gilding it outside makes it no different.

Thomas. That is right now. You had some good plan for making the axle run smooth.

Martin [letting wheel fall and putting his hands to his head]. It is no use. [Angrily.] Why did you send the priest to awake me? My soul is my own and my mind is my own. I will send them to where I like. You have no authority over my thoughts.

Thomas. That is no way to be speaking to me. I am head of this business. Nephew or no nephew, I will have no one come cold or unwilling to the work.

Martin. I had better go. I am of no use to you. I am going.... I must be alone.... I will forget if I am not alone. Give me what is left of my money, and I will go out of this.

Thomas [opening a press and taking out a bag and throwing it to him]. There is what is left of your money! The rest of it you have spent on the coach. If you want to go, go, and I will not have to be annoyed with you from this out.

Andrew. Come now with me, Thomas. The boy is foolish, but it will soon pass over. He has not my sense to be giving attention to what you will say. Come along now; leave him for a while; leave him to me, I say; it is I will get inside his mind.

[He leads Thomas out. Martin, when they have gone, sits down, taking up lion and unicorn.]

Martin. I think it was some shining thing I saw.... What was it?

Andrew [opening door and putting in his head]. Listen to me, Martin.

Martin. Go away—no more talking—leave me alone.

Andrew [coming in]. Oh, but wait. I understand you. Thomas doesn't understand your thoughts, but I understand them. Wasn't I telling you I was just like you once?

Martin. Like me? Did you ever see the other things, the things beyond?

Andrew. I did. It is not the four walls of the house keep me content. Thomas doesn't know, oh, no, he doesn't know.

Martin. No, he has no vision.

Andrew. He has not, nor any sort of a heart for frolic.

Martin. He has never heard the laughter and the music beyond.

Andrew. He has not, nor the music of my own little flute. I have it hidden in the thatch outside.

Martin. Does the body slip from you as it does from me? They have not shut your window into eternity?

Andrew. Thomas never shut a window I could not get through. I knew you were one of my own sort. When I am sluggish in the morning Thomas says, "Poor Andrew is getting old." That is all he knows. The way to keep young is to do the things youngsters do. Twenty years I have been slipping away, and he never found me out yet!

Martin. That is what they call ecstasy, but there is no word that can tell out very plain what it means. That freeing of the mind from its thoughts. Those wonders we know; when we put them into words, the words seem as little like them as blackberries are like the moon and sun.

Andrew. I found that myself the time they knew me to be wild, and used to be asking me to say what pleasure did I find in cards, and women, and drink.

Martin. You might help me to remember that vision I had this morning, to understand it. The memory of it has slipped from me. Wait; it is coming back, little by little. I know that I saw the unicorns trampling, and then a figure, a many-changing figure, holding some bright thing. I knew something was going to happen or to be said, ... something that would make my whole life strong and beautiful like the rushing of the unicorns, and then, and then....

Johnny Bacach's Voice [at window]. A poor person I am, without food, without a way, without portion, without costs, without a person or a stranger, without means, without hope, without health, without warmth....

Andrew [looking towards window]. It is that troop of beggars; bringing their tricks and their thieveries they are to the Kinvara fair.

Martin [impatiently]. There is no quiet ... come to the other room. I am trying to remember....

[They go to door of inner room, but Andrew stops him.]

Andrew. They are a bad-looking fleet. I have a mind to drive them away, giving them a charity.

Martin. Drive them away or come away from their voices.

Another Voice. I put under the power of my prayer,

Sure giving to us is giving to the Lord and laying up a store in the treasury of heaven.

Andrew. Whisht! He is coming in by the window! [Johnny B. climbs in.]

Johnny B. That I may never sin, but the place is empty!

Paudeen. Go in and see what can you make a grab at.

Johnny B. [getting in]. That every blessing I gave may be turned to a curse on them that left the place so bare! [He turns things over.] I might chance something in this chest if it was open.... [Andrew begins creeping towards him.]

Nanny [outside]. Hurry on now, you limping crabfish, you! We can't be stopping here while you'll boil stirabout!

Johnny B. [seizing bag of money and holding it up in both hands]. Look at this now, look! [Andrew comes behind and seizes his arm.]

Johnny B. [letting bag fall with a crash]. Destruction on us all!

Martin [running forward, seizes him. Heads disappear]. That is it! Oh, I remember! That is what happened! That is the command! Who was it sent you here with that command?

Johnny B. It was misery sent me in and starvation and the hard ways of the world.

Nanny [outside]. It was that, my poor child, and my one son only. Show mercy to him now, and he after leaving gaol this