Supernatural; World War, 1914-1918; World War, 1914-1918 -- Fiction
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.
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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