Have waken'd thy fondest, thy liveliest thrill;
But so oft hast thou echo'd the deep sigh of sadness,
That ev'n in thy mirth it will steal from thee still."

_Flannery_: That's a great thought, if it is but a
vanity or a dream.

_Rock_: (_Sneeringly_.) Well now and what would
_you_ do?

_Flannery_: I would wish a great lake of milk,
the same as blessed St. Bridget, to be sharing with
the family of Heaven. I would wish vessels full
of alms that would save every sorrowful man. Do
that now, Conan, and you'll have the world of
prayers down on you!

_Rock_: It's what I'd do, to turn the whole of
Galway Bay to dry land, and I to have it for myself,
the red land, the green land, the fallow and the
lea! The want of land is a great stoppage to a man
having means to lay out in stock.

(_Sings_.) (_Air, "I wish I had the shepherd's lamb."_)

"I wish I had both mill and kiln,
I wish I had of land my fill;
I wish I had both mill and kiln,
And all would follow after!"

_Flannery_: Ah, the land, the land, the rotten
land, and what will you have in the end but the
breadth of your back of it? Let you now soften
the heart in that one (_points to Rock_) till he would
restore to me the thing he is aware of.

_Conan_: It was not for that the spell was
promised, to be changing a few neighbours or a
thing of the kind, or to be doing wonders in this
broken little place. A town of dead factions! To
change any of the dwellers in this place would be
to make it better, for it would be impossible to
make it worse. The time you wouldn't be meddling
with them you wouldn't know them to be
bad, but the time you'd have to do business with
them that's the time you'd know it!

_Rock_: I suppose it is what you are asking to
do, to make yourself rich?

_Conan_: I do not! I would be loth take any
profit, and Aristotle after laying down that _to_
pleasure or _to_ profit every wealthy man is a slave!

_Flannery_: What would you do, so?

_Conan_: I will change all into the similitude of
ancient Greece! There is no man at all can understand
argument but it is from Greece he is. I know
well what I'm doing. I'm not like a potato having
eyes this way and that. People were harmless
long ago and why wouldn't they be made harmless
again? Aristotle said, "Fair play is more
beautiful than the morning and the evening star!"

"Be friendly with one another," he said, "and
let the lawyers starve!" I'll turn the captains of
soldiers