Page:The Strange Case of Miss Annie Spragg (1928).djvu/116

 sippi. He had come in a way as an offering to God from a father who was grateful for nine sons, but he would have come whether his father permitted it or not because he had seen visions while turning the sod and knew that God had chosen him. And his mother was a religious, who was half insane from the loneliness of a prairie where there were no other women. Leander was her darling and the one chosen by her to follow God. To him had been given the richest food. He alone had been given books and the time to read them. When he came to Cordova he was still an adolescent, chaste and tempted, troubled by visions and dreams, carnal and celestial. He was, too, a strong youth.

He was handsome in the florid way of Anglo-Saxon youths, with curling blond hair and bright blue eyes with long dark lashes like those of a girl. At forty he would be ruddy and perhaps bloated. At twenty he was like a young Florentine painted by Leonardo.

It was Leander Potts who became the only friend of Annie and Uriah Spragg. It was a slow thing, this friendship, for Uriah with his pride and sense of difference from the rest of the world, could make no advances. And Annie stayed much at home, save for solitary walks along the sluggish river when she was happy, noticing the ways of the birds and beasts, the trees and the flowers. Uriah acknowledged the greetings of his fellow students, but chose never to be the first to exchange a word regarding the weather or the sermons. He had the sensitiveness of a boy too old and too big for his schoolfellows.