“You’re funning me,” says the Englishman. “How would you be abroad without reason, and you having a beautiful wise countenance on you?”
With that Michael Hugh told him the story of the dreams that brought him from Ireland, and how he was expectant of a sign to instruct him to come at the kist. The Englishman let a great laugh.
“You’re a simple fellow,” says he. “Let you give up heeding the like of visions and ghosts, for there is madness in the same and no pure reason at all. There’s few has more nor better knowledge than myself of how they be striving to entice us from our work, but I’m a reasonable man and I never gave in to them yet.”
“Might I make so free as to ask,” says Michael Hugh, “what sort of a vision are you after resisting?”
“I’ll tell you and welcome,” says the Englishman. “There isn’t a night of my life but I hear a voice calling: ‘Away with you to Ireland, and seek out a man the name of Michael Hugh. There is treasure buried in under a lone bush in his garden, and that is in Breffny of Connacht.’ ”
The poor Irishman was near demented with joy at the words, for he understood he was brought all that journey to learn of gold was a stone’s throw from his own little cabin door.
But he was a conny sort of a person, and he never let on to the other that Michael Hugh was the name of him, nor that he came from Breffny of Connacht.
The Englishman invited him into his house for to rest there that night, and he didn’t spare his advice that dreams were a folly and sin.
“You have me convinced of the meaning of my visions,” says Michael Hugh. “And what’s more I’ll go home as you bid me.”
Next morning he started out, and he made great haste with the desire was on him to get digging the gold.