"This nonday diary, this allnights newseryreel."

(488.13-490.5)  Following up on Shaun's thoughts about the twin brothers in eternal opposition to each other, the old man wonders who this other is.  This prompts Shaun to go further in depth about his brother's whereabouts and troubles.  This "skipgod" (scapegoat) was expelled from his native land "for looking at churches from behind."  Shaun quotes from a telegram he received from Shem, indicating that Shem is starving and begging his brother for cash.  There are some people who believe Shem is dead and mourn him, but others are waiting for his return.  Shaun hopes that Shem will escape the gallows, and he wonders whether Shem is living safely in "austrasia" off the hush money he received from Shaun or has hopped off to some other place.  Each of the two brothers, as alike as they are different, feels that he is the one living properly and that the other is wrong:  "He feels he ought to be as asamed of me as me to be ashunned of him."  Shem is destitute, with worn down boots and no gloves, and his brother asks the old men to spare some change for the exile.  "I am no scholar but I loved that man who has africot lupps with the moonshane in his profile, my shemblable!" he says.  "My freer!"

The old man praises Shaun's words for his brother.  Shaun calls his address his "nonday diary" and "allnights newseryreel," titles apt for the Wake, as well.  Did Shem derive any victory from being a vexed victim, the old man asks?  "Mighty sure!" Shaun replies.  Shem, Shaun says, was hit in the small of his back by a perambulator, and "he's been failing of that kink in his arts over sense."