Page:The Strange Case of Miss Annie Spragg (1928).djvu/113

 by God to spread His word. There were boys among them scarcely more than half his age and none of them was as old as his youngest sister Annie.

There was between Annie and Uriah a mysterious feeling which bound them together, as if they had been twins born of the same cell rather than brother and sister separated by twelve years with many brothers and sisters between. It may have been the knowledge that they were the two most cherished by the tired long-suffering woman who had borne them, or that they alone of all the thirteen understood the long agony of her lifetime. And they had known now for a long time, without once speaking of it, that their father was neither God nor God's Prophet nor even a good man, but only a lustful old reprobate who deceived himself into believing that he was God. It was a thought neither of them had ever uttered. They knew it. And when their mother died they went quickly away because Uriah was in haste to begin the atonement.

It had never occurred to either of them that on leaving the Saint's colony they should go separate ways. Having lived always a little apart from the world in the strange migratory life of the Prophet, having been steeped always in religion and Bible reading, they came to believe without knowing it that they were strange marked creatures who did not belong to the world as others did. As far back as they could remember the world had treated them as curiosities. There were always crowds about the wagon of the Prophet staring at him and his children. . . as if they were wild beasts.