COND MERCHANT. If each one brings a bit of merchandise,
We'll give him such a price he never dreamt of.

MARY. Where shall the starving come at merchandise?

FIRST MERCHANT. We will ask nothing but what all men have.

MARY. Their swine and cattle, fields and implements
Are sold and gone.

FIRST MERCHANT. They have not sold all yet.
For there's a vaporous thing--that may be nothing,
But that's the buyer's risk--a second self,
They call immortal for a story's sake.

SHEMUS. You come to buy our souls?

TEIG. I'll barter mine.
Why should we starve for what may be but nothing?

MARY. Teig and Shemus--

SHEMUS. What can it be but nothing?
What has God poured out of His bag but famine?
Satan gives money.

TEIG. Yet no thunder stirs.

FIRST MERCHANT. There is a heap for each.

(SHEMUS goes to take money.)

But no, not yet,
For there's a work I have to set you to.

SHEMUS. So then you're as deceitful as the rest,
And all that talk of buying what's but a vapour
Is fancy bred. I might have known as much,
Because that's how the trick-o'-the-loop man talks.

FIRST MERCHANT. That's for the work, each has its separate price;
But neither price is paid till the work's done.

TEIG. The same for me.

MARY. Oh, God, why are you still?

FIRST MERCHANT. You've but to cry aloud at every cross-road,
At every house door, that we buy men's souls,
And give so good a price that all may live
In mirth and comfort till the famine's done,
Because we are Christian men.

SHEMUS. Come, let's away.

TREIG> I shall keep running till I've earned the price.

SECOND MERCHANT. (who has risen and gone towards fire)
Stop, for we obey a generous Master,
That would be served by Comfortable men.
And here's your entertainment on the road.

(TRIG and SHEMUS have stopped. TEIG takes the money. They go
out.)

MARY. Destroyers of souls, God will destroy you quickly.
You shall at last dry like dry leaves and hang
Nailed like dead vermin to the doors of God.

SECOND MERCHANT.
Curse to your fill, for saints will have their dreams.

FIRST MERCHANTm Though we're but vermin that our Master sent
To overrun the world, he at the end
Shall pull apart the pale ribs of the moon
And quench the stars in the ancestral night.

MARY. God is all powerful.

SECOND MERCHANT. Pray, you shall need Him.
You shall eat dock and grass, and dandelion,
Till that low threshold there becomes a wall,
And when your hands can scarcely drag your body
We shal