What you want! Have I not borne enough to make me know I must be righted sometime?--And what else Would break the hardy sin in them, which lets Their souls parade so daring and so tall Under God's hate and mine? What else could pay For all my wrong but a blow of blazing anger Striking down to shiver the earth, and change Their strutting wickedness to horror and crying? Merrick: Be quiet, Huff! If you mean to believe This dowser's stuff, and join him in his bedlam, By God, you'll have to reckon with my fist. [SHALE comes in. HUFF glares at him speechless, but with wrath evidently working.] Shale: Where's the joker? You, is it? Here's hot news You've brought us; all the valley's hissing aloud, And makes as much of you falling into it As a pail of water would of a glowing coal. Sollers: Don't you start burbling too, Shale. Shale: That's the word! Burbling, simmering, ay and bumpy-boiling: All the women are mobbed together close Under the witan-trees, and their full minds Boil like so many pans slung on a fire. Why, starlings trooping in a copse in fall Could make no scandal like it. Merrick: What is it, man? Shale: End of the World! The flying star! End of the World! Sollers: They don't believe it though? Shale: What? the whole place Has gone just randy over it! Merrick: Hold your noise! Sollers: I shall be daft if this goes on. Shale: Ay, so? The End of the World's been here? You look as though You'd startled lately. And there's the virtuous man! How would End of the World suit our good Huff, Our old crab-verjuice Huff? HUFF (seizing the DOWSER and bringing him up in front of SHALE):