Page:The Strange Case of Miss Annie Spragg (1928).djvu/157

 human—duty and the sense of atonement for the sins of his father the Prophet and for the sins of his unchaste sister. He came at last never to walk in the town but always in the open country. Once a year he went away to attend for three days the convention of his church. It was his only diversion.

Among the farmers who lived along the road to Meeker's Gulch there was one of German descent called Ed Hasselman, who kept cows and supplied milk for most of the citizens of Winnebago Falls. He was a hard-working man, but the curse of drink was on him. Sometimes he would stay sober for months and then one day the appetite would take possession of him and he would become like a madman, staying drunk for days and weeks. Sometimes it was whiskey and sometimes it was only hard cider, but his drunkenness possessed always the same wild quality of bestiality. At such times he was seized with nightmare visions and went out of his mind, and then a woman called Maria Hazlett who kept house for him would have to deliver the milk in Winnebago Falls. When she appeared the whole town knew that Ed Hasselman was drunk again. She was a fat, blousy woman with a moustache and Ed Hasselman had never married her, but she was accepted as next best to being his wife. No one knew her well, for she was a silent woman who appeared to accept all that life brought her without comment or complaint. She was never heard even to complain of Ed Hasselman's drunkenness and