_Mineog:_ I can bear witness you have no such yellow look. And Hazel is a natural name.

_Hazel:_ It's likely they'll say I was a sheep-stealer or a tinker that went foraging around after food!

_Mineog:_ You that never put your hand on a rabbit burrow or stood before a magistrate or a judge!

_Hazel:_ They'll put me down as a grabber that was ready to quench a widow's fire!

_Mineog:_ Oh, where are you running to at all my dear man!

_Hazel:_ And I not to be able at that time to rise up and to get satisfaction! I to be wandering as a shadow and to see some schemer spilling out his lies! That would be the most grief in death! I to hit him a blow of my fist and he maybe not to feel it or to think it to be but a breeze of wind!

_Mineog:_ You are going too far entirely!

_Hazel:_ I to give out a strong curse on him and on his posterity and his land. It would kill my heart if he would take it to be no human voice, but some vanity like the hissing of geese!

_Mineog:_ I myself would recognise your voice, and you to be living or dead.

_Hazel:_ You say that now. But my ghost to come calling to you in the night time to rise up and to clear my character, you would run shivering to the priest as from some unnatural thing. You would call to him to come banish me with a Ma.s.s!

_Mineog:_ The Lord be between us and harm.

_Hazel:_ To have no power of revenge after death! My strength to go nourish weeds and gra.s.s! A lie to be told and I living I could go lay my case before the courts. So I will too! I'll silence you! I'll learn you to have done with misspellings and with death notices!

I'll hinder you bringing in Ca.s.serlys! I go take advice from the lawyer! _(Goes towards door.)_

_Mineog:_ I'll go lay down my own case and the way that you have my life threatened!

_Hazel:_ I'll get justice and a hearing. The Judge will give in to my say!

_Mineog:_ I that will put you under bail! I'll bind you over to quit prophesying!

_Hazel:_ I'll break the bail of the sun and moon before I'll give you leave to go brand me with strange names the same as you would tarbrand a sheep! I'll put yourself and your _Tribune_ under the law of libel!

_Mineog:_ I'll make a world's wonder of you! I'll give plenty and enough to the _Champion_ to fill out its windy pages that time!

_Hazel: (At door.)_ I will lay my information before you will overtake me!

_Mineog: (Seizing him.)_ I will lay my information against you for theft and you bringing away my coat!

_Hazel:_ I have no intention of bringing it away!

_Mineog:_ Is it that you will deny it? Don't I know that spot of grease on the sleeve?

_Hazel:_ Did I never carve a goose? Why wouldn't there be a spot of grease on my own sleeve?

_Mineog:_ Strip it off of you this minute!

_Hazel:_ Give me back my own coat, so!

_Mineog:_ What are you talking about! That's a great wonder now.

So it is not my own coat.

_Hazel:_ Strip it off before you will quit the room!

_Mineog:_ I'll be well pleased casting it off!

_Hazel:_ You will not cast it on the dust and the dirt of the floor!

_(Helps him.)_ Go easy now.----That's it----

_(Takes it off gently and places it on chair.)_

_Mineog:_ Give me now my own coat!

_Hazel: (Struggling with it.)_ It fails me to get it off.

_Mineog:_ What way did you get it on?

_Hazel:_ It is that it is made too narrow.

_Mineog:_ No, but yourself that has too much bulk.

_Hazel: (Struggling.)_ There now is a tear!

_Mineog: (Taking his arm.)_ Mind now, you'll have it destroyed.

_Hazel:_ Give me a hand, so.

_Mineog: (Helping him gently.)_ Have a care--it's a bit tender in the seams----give me here your hand--it is caught in the rip of the lining.

_John: (Coming in, puts pie on table.)_ Wait now, sir, till I'll aid you to handle Mr. Hazel's coat.

_(Whips off coat, takes up other coat, hangs both on pegs.)_

The apple pie, Sir.

_(Hazel sits down, gasping and wiping his face.

Mineog turns his back.)_

_John:_ Is there anything after happening, Mr. Hazel?

_Hazel:_ There is not--unless some sort of a battle.

_John:_ Ah, what signifies? There to be more of battles in the world there would be less of wars.

_(He pushes Mineog's chair to table.)_

_Hazel: (After a pause.)_ Apple pie?

_Mineog: (Sitting down.)_ Indeed, I am not any way inclined for eating.