Flannery:  (Sulkily.) What way would I know?

Conan:  (Shaking him.) I know well what happened!  It is ye have stolen two of my blasts!  Putting changes on yourselves ye would—­much good may it do ye—.  Thieving with your covetousness the last two nearly I had left!

Rock:  (Sulkily.) Leave your hand off me!  I never stole no blast!

Conan:  There’s a bad class going through the world.  The most people you will give to will be the first to cry you down.  This was a wrong out of measure!  Thieves ye are and pickpockets!  Ye that were not worth changing from one to another, no more than you’d change a pinch of dust off the road into a puff of ashes.  Stealing away my lovely blasts, bad luck to ye, the same as Prometheus stole the makings of a fire from the ancient gods!

Flannery:  That is enough of keening and lamenting after a few blasts of barren wind—­I’ll be going where I have my own business to attend.

Conan:  Where, so, is the bellows?

Flannery:  How would I know?

Conan:  The two of ye won’t quit this till I’ll find it!  There is another two blasts in it that will bring sense and knowledge into Ireland yet!

Rock:  Indeed they might bring comfort yet to many a sore heart!

Conan:  (Searching.) Where now is it?  I couldn’t find it if the earth rose up and swallowed it.  Where now did I lay it down?

Rock:  There’s too much changes in this place for me to know where anything is gone.

Conan:  (At door.) Where are you, Maryanne!  Celia!  Timothy!  Let ye come hither and search out my little bellows!

(Timothy comes in, followed by Mother.)

Conan:  Hearken now, Timothy!

Timothy:  (Stopping his ears.) Speak easy, speak easy!

Conan:  Take down now your fingers from your ears the way you will hear my voice!

Timothy:  Have a care now with your screeching would you split the drum of my ear?

Conan:  Is it that you have got your hearing?

Timothy:  My hearing is it?  As good as that I can hear a lie, and it forming in the mind.

Conan:  Is that the truth you’re saying?

Timothy:  Hear, is it!  I can hear every whisper in this parish and the seven parishes are nearest.  And the little midges roaring in the air.—­Let ye whist now with your sneezing in the draught!

Conan:  This is surely the work of the bellows.  Another blast gone!

Rock:  So it would be too.  Mostly the whole of them gone and spent.  It’s hard know in the morning what way will it be with you at night.
    (Sings.)

  “I saw from the beach when the morning was
    shining
  A bark o’er the waters move gloriously on—­
  came when the sun o’er the beach was declining,
  The bark was still there, but the waters were gone.”