It was O'Hagan's whole business to find desolate corners, where he could sleep without the fear of interruption by the police; and hence being in a part of the country that he knew well, he bethought himself suddenly of the great barn next to the mansion house at Tilney St. Lawrence. It was always full of good hay, as large as a barrack and no thoroughfare passed within a quarter of a mile of it. In such a place, and with the scent of the hay to lull him, O'Hagan threw his tired body down, and soon lost all the cares of the world in complete repose.
All his life O'Hagan had been a habitual dreamer; the nights were few, that is to say, when on awakening he did not find that some mental traffics and discoveries had been his, and at times, the whole night through he would meet with most dazzling adventures. In prison his dreams had been a great solace to him, and each night he had settled down to devote the dark hours to the cultivation of joyous dreams. He was one of those men who went to sleep fair and square, and looked for dreams. But as O'Hagan stretched in the hay, things were revealed to him that were beyond all dreams, and of course he could not keep the strange priest out of the vision. It opened with finding himself in front of the doors of an old church, where, he understood, he was going to hide from someone who wanted to kill him. He knocked on the door and the man who opened the door was the very priest he had seen in the afternoon. He asked him to step in and instantly turned round and walked up the dimly lit aisle, and O'Hagan understood that he had to follow. In silence they passed through a small arch in the chancel and mounted a narrow oak staircase with many corners and tortuous turns and arrived at a small landing with a studded door set in it. Quite inexplicably O'Hagan's heart sank at the sight of it. However, the priest unlocked and opened it, and held it open for him to enter, and without coming in himself, closed it. It was a small oak room with a stone floor, and a curious smell at once attracted his notice. It was there--there, close to him--under his very nose--the strong, acrid odour of decay--the nauseating smell of the grave. Looking about he saw the floor was paved with grave stones. In one corner stood a fine seventeenth century lead coffin. A curious greyish light shone from it. O'Hagan's conjecture had been right: there was something awful in the room, and with the terror of nightmare seizing him swiftly by the throat and throttling him, he awoke in a spasm of terror. O'Hagan was sitting bolt upright with the impression that someone had flashed a lantern in his face, though the barn was absolutely pitch dark. "I've had a most diabolical nightmare. It was the drink," he said to himself, and decided to go to sleep again. But the excessive heat of the barn would let him rest no longer. The atmosphere seemed to be hot and pungent, and he groped about and opened the door to let in some air. Almost at the same moment someone cried "Fire!" and shapes of things began to define in a soft grey glimmering;--and the gloom was broken up by a red and angry spurt of flame from a wing of the old manor house. Again cries of "Fire!" came to his ears, and grew and multiplied. O'Hagan was fully awake in an instant, and running at top speed towards the old mansion. When he reached it the whole sky about was illuminated by a red and angry light. Almost at the moment of his arrival a tower of smoke arose in front of the porch window, and with a tingling report, a pane fell outwards at his feet. A crowd of cowed and white-faced country folk drew back when he rushed up. Then he looked up at the porch window and saw what it was that made the people go. He saw a girl's terrified face at the window. "The girl I lifted the bag from," he said aloud. "She'll be burnt to death."