Page:The Strange Case of Miss Annie Spragg (1928).djvu/155

 lived in the thicket in peace with more timid winged things.

And then one morning old Mrs. Bosanky arrived leading on a string a young he-goat that had been left behind by an Irish family which had set out for Oregon. He was a fine creature, with black intelligent eyes and a long fine shining coat as black as night. And after a time the town became used to a new sight, more extraordinary than any of the others. It saw Miss Annie Spragg walking in the evenings after her work was done along the road toward Meeker's Gulch, a lonely and almost impenetrable marshy thicket some four miles to the north. The he-goat walked beside her in the most docile fashion without even the constraint of a leading string, and when dogs ran out from the houses along the road to bark at the queer figure of Miss Annie Spragg, he arched his back prettily and bent his head and beat the earth with his pretty shining black hoofs. She took him there to feed upon the wild sweet clover that grew high on the edges of the country road. Sometimes when people passed along the road while the goat was feeding, they encountered the green eyes of Miss Annie Spragg watching them through the black veil she always wore, and they hurried on, filled with the nameless and ancestral fear that attacks children in the dark.

Uriah, too, sometimes walked along the county road that led to Meeker's Gulch, but never at the hour of sunset. He chose the morning and the mid-