flew in and out at will.
Hundreds of sparrows chirped in the oak beams above. The shells had
pitted, starred and jerked up the blue flagstones in the porch on which
O'Hagan stood. Parts of the old church had been shelled nearly level;
little twisted fragments of beautiful leaded windows had been swept up
in a pile outside with other wreckage. As O'Hagan walked up the aisle a
feeling came over him that he knew much of the old place. A quintessence
and distillation of peace and comradeship seemed to inhabit the soft
gloam of its chancel. He found himself drifting back to past days and
seeing dimly in a thin white cloud faces that seemed familiar and yet
were unnameable. Then one face stood out distinctly, and O'Hagan watched
it with breathless wonder and fascination. He moved closer up to it; he
would have given much not to have done so, but he could not help
himself--he looked closer, and it was--the face of the monk who had
appeared to him once before. When the cloud had cleared a little, the
outline of the monk wearing a hood and cowl became visible. Then was
there a voice that he identified at once despite the lapse of two years
since he had last heard it. "I have been wanting to speak to you,
brother, for many hours, but _something_ I cannot explain to mortal man
has prevented me." The priest instantly turned round and O'Hagan
understood that he meant him to follow. His heart sank at once, and he
experienced a sense of dreadful oppression and foreboding, and with a
sudden thrill, partly of fear, and partly of curiosity he followed. They
passed up the aisle and a perfectly familiar staircase. Then he opened a
door, and went in, and at the same moment, sheer unreasoning terror
seized him. He was afraid, but did not know why: he was simply afraid.
Then like a sudden recollection, when one remembers some trivial
adventure of childhood, O'Hagan looked for the old lead coffin. He cast
his eyes about with a certain air of proprietorship, and compared the
room with the room of his dreams. Nothing had changed. And then, with a
sudden start of unexplained dread, he saw that the coffin was in the
corner--the same leaden coffin that he knew so well with the same
curious greyish light coming from it. There was lettering on the lid.

"What's written there? What's there? Who's there?" he called. He called
and continued to call; then another terror, the terror of the sound of
his own voice seized him; he did not dare to call again; h