Then of a sudden the mist began to rise from the clump of bushes and the stranger vanished. O'Hagan was back in the flesh. He stood there dazed for the moment, with the little cross clutched in his hand. He sat down again and _tried_ to force his spirit back to the other scene, but in vain. He felt that he had been thrilled through and through. The oppression, however, unlike the stern-faced monk, did not vanish, it deepened. A throbbing headache came on, which refused to be shaken off, and eventually sent O'Hagan to the "Bell Inn" to drink still deeper of the waters of oblivion.
The day was already falling when he walked, jingling his silver, into the sanded bar of the "Bell Inn," and an hour or so later, when it began to fill with drovers and country folk, O'Hagan had looked much on the good brown ale. He was in fact becoming very noisy. Seated in a corner, he sang "Nell and Roger at the Wake" in a hoarse voice. The country folk grinned and looked at him curiously.
"Shut your gab, old sport," said a rough-looking drover at last, "that song is not fit for decent folk to hear."
O'Hagan swore like any trooper, and reached his hand out to a large spirit bottle at his elbow, and for a moment the drover thought he would get it thrown at his head. However, O'Hagan rose to his feet, made a bow to the company, and made an apology to the drover. He stood there, a blackguard on the face of him, but a gentleman in spite of that undefinable and vaguely repulsive smirk which played about his straight and refined mouth. He slunk away into the night.
As O'Hagan walked the night deepened in throbs of gathering darkness. The sense of uneasiness that had been with him ever since the priest in the cassock had appeared to him was not to be easily thrown off. He set himself to argue down the uneasiness for which there was no more foundation than a bad attack of "nerves" after the gloomy life in prison. He told himself, till he believed it, that a man--just a human man--had been crossing the fields, and that being smitten with religious fervour he had quoted the Scripture aloud, as he had often heard such people do. He told himself it was mere fancy that was the cause of the belief that something was _shining_ around the man's head. As he argued these things away, and banished the face of his visitor, a certain sort of reason usurped his place. But he did not feel comfortable, however, he fell short of any form of fear.