Page:The Strange Case of Miss Annie Spragg (1928).djvu/159

 the town, but mostly among the members of Uriah Spragg's own flock, murmurs began to arise against them, and strange rumors that they were both mad and that Miss Annie Spragg at least deserved being shut up. Surely it was not respectable to have such a woman as the sister of one's preacher, and sometimes people who belonged to other churches—Methodists and Baptists and even the haughty Congregationalists—treated the Reverend Uriah Spragg and his sister as comic figures. But worst of all, the old black story of the Prophet, leader of the Spraggites, never long dead, raised its head. It was a story never far distant in the memories of all the prairie people and in the years since the Prophet's mysterious end it had grown in exaggeration and unwholesome detail. Uriah and Annie Spragg were two of the products of the Prophet's colossal lust and as such were the accursed of God and the beloved of the Devil. There was even talk of riding Uriah Spragg out of town upon a rail, and there were dark stories that Annie Spragg was much more to him than a sister.

It came to a crisis one hot Sunday morning in August when Uriah Spragg went as usual to preach to the remnants of his flock in the decaying wooden church, and he found his own church door locked against him. Across it had been nailed three planks and on one of these was fastened a bit of paper on which was written in half-illiterate handwriting:

