Staffy: That is a master I’d be willing to engage with, he to give me my victuals and my ease.

Damer: In my opinion it was to keep temptation from our path the gold of the world was covered under rocks and in the depths of the streams.  Believe me it is best leave it where it is, and not to meddle with the Almighty.

Staffy: You’d be best without it.  It is the weight of it is bowing you to your grave.  When things are vexing your mind and you are trouble minded they’ll be going through your head in the night time.  There is a big shift and a great change in you since yesterday.  There is not the half of you in it.  You have the cut of the misfortune.

Damer: I am under misfortune indeed.

Staffy: Give over now your load to myself before the coming of the dusk.  The way you are there’ll be nothing left of you within three days.  There is no way with you but death.

Delia: (To Ralph.) Let you raise your voice now, and come around him on my own behalf.

Ralph: It is what herself is saying, you to be quitting the world as it seems, it is as good for you make over to her your crock of gold.

Damer: I would not wish, for all the glories of Ireland, to leave temptation in the path of my own sister or my kin, or to twist a gad for their neck.

Delia: (To Ralph.) Tell him I’ll chance it.

Damer: At the time of the judgment of the mountain, when the sun and moon will be all one with two blackberries, it is not being pampered with plenty will serve you, beside being great with the angels!

Delia: (Shrinking back.) I would as soon nearly not get it at all, where it might bring me to the wretched state of Damer!
   (Dog heard barking.)

Damer: I’ll go bring my poor Jubair out of this.  A great sin and a great pity to be losing provision with a dog, and the image of the saints maybe to be going hungry and bare.  How do I know what troop might be bearing witness against me before the gate of heaven?  To be cherishing a ravenous beast might be setting his teeth in their limbs!  To give charity to the poor is the best religion in Ireland.  Didn’t our Lord Himself go beg through three and thirty years? (He goes.)

Delia:  (Coming forward.) Will you believe me now telling you he is gone unsteady in the head?

Staffy: I see no other sign.  He is a gone man surely.  His understanding warped and turned backward.  To see him blighted the way he is would stir the heart of a stone.

Ralph: He surely got some vision or some warning, or there lit on him a fit or a stroke.

Staffy: Twice a child and only once a man.  He is turned to be innocent with age.

Ralph: It would be a bad thing he to meet with his death unknown to us.

Delia: It would be worse again he that is gone out of his latitude to be brought away to the asylum.