ow.

THOMAS. I thought at the first it was gone asleep he was. But when
shaking him and roaring at him failed to rouse him, I knew well it was
the falling sickness. Believe me, the doctor will reach it with his
drugs.

FATHER JOHN. Nothing but prayer can reach a soul that is so far beyond
the world as his soul is at this moment.

THOMAS. You are not saying that the life is gone out of him!

FATHER JOHN. No, no, his life is in no danger. But where he himself,
the spirit, the soul, is gone, I cannot say. It has gone beyond our
imaginings. He is fallen into a trance.

THOMAS. He used to be queer as a child, going asleep in the fields and
coming back with talk of white horses he saw, and bright people like
angels or whatever they were. But I mended that. I taught him to
recognise stones beyond angels with a few strokes of a rod. I would
never give in to visions or to trances.

FATHER JOHN. We who hold the faith have no right to speak against
trance or vision. St. Teresa had them, St. Benedict, St. Anthony, St.
Columcille. St. Catherine of Sienna often lay a long time as if dead.

THOMAS. That might be so in the olden time, but those things are gone
out of the world now. Those that do their work fair and honest have no
occasion to let the mind go rambling. What would send my nephew, Martin
Hearne, into a trance, supposing trances to be in it, and he rubbing
the gold on the lion and unicorn that he had taken in hand to make a
good job of for the top of the coach?

FATHER JOHN [_taking it up_]. It is likely it was that sent him off.
The flashing of light upon it would be enough to throw one that had a
disposition to it into a trance. There was a very saintly man, though
he was not of our church, he wrote a great book called "Mysterium
Magnum," was seven days in a trance. Truth, or whatever truth he found,
fell upon him like a bursting shower, and he a poor tradesman at his
work. It was a ray of sunlight on a pewter vessel that was the
beginning of all. [_Goes to the door of inner room._] There is no stir
in him yet. It is either the best thing or the worst thing can happen
to anyone that is happening to him now.

THOMAS. And what in the living world can happen to a man that is asleep
on his bed?

FATHER JOHN. There are some would answer you that it is to those who
are awake that nothing happens, and it is they that know nothing. He is
gone where all have gone for supreme truth.

THOMAS [_sitting down again and ta