Thorkell began to talk of carvals, and said he had come to hear some of them. The old bard's eyes brightened. He had written a carol about the sickness. From the "lath" he took a parchment pan, full of papers that were worn, thumb-marked, and greasy. From one of these papers he began to read, and Thorkell tried to listen. The poem was an account of a dream. The dreamer had dreamt that he had gone into a church. There was a congregation gathered, and a preacher was in the pulpit. But when the preacher prayed the dreamer heard nothing of God. At length he discovered that it was a congregation of the dead in the region of the damned. They had all died of the Sweat. Every man of them had been warned by wise men and women in this world. The congregation sang a joyless psalm, and when their service was done they began to break up. Then the dreamer recognized some whom he had known in the flesh. Among them was one who had killed his own son, and he was afflicted with a burning thirst. To this unhappy man the dreamer offered a basin of milk-and-water, but the damned soul could not get the basin to his parched lips, struggle as he might to lift it in his stiff arms. At first Thorkell listened with the restless mind of a man who had come on better business, and then with a feverish interest. The sky had darkened since he entered the house, and while the old bard chanted in his sing-song voice, and the children made their clatter around his feet, a storm of heavy rain pelted against the window-pane. The ballad ended in the grim doggerel of a harrowing appeal to the sinner to shun his evil courses: "O sinner, see your dangerous state, And think of hell ere 'tis too late; When worldly cares would drown each thought, Pray call to mind that hell is hot. Still to increase your godly fears Let this be sounding in your ears, Still bear in mind that hell is hot, Remember, and forget it not." Thus, with a swinging motion of the body, the old bard of the mountains chanted this rude song on the dangers of damnation. Thorkell leaped up from the settle and sputtered out an expression of contempt. What madness was this? If he had his way he would clap all superstitious people into the Castle. The next morning, when sitting down to breakfast, Thorkell told Jarvis Kerruish that he had three nights running dreamt the same dream, and it was a terrible one. Jarvis laughed in his face, and said he was a foolish old man. Thorkell answered with heat, and they parted on the instant, neither touching food. Toward noon Thorkell imagined he felt feverish, and asked for Jarvis Kerruish; but Jarvis was at his toilet and would not be disturbed. At five o'clock the same day Thorkell was sweating from every pore, and crying lustily that he had taken the sickness. Toward seven he ordered the servant--a young man named Juan Caine, who had come to fill Hommy's place--to go in search of the Romish priest, Father Dalby.