Page:The Strange Case of Miss Annie Spragg (1928).djvu/161

 lay the body of a man. Being a courageous and unsqueamish woman used to hard farm work and butchering, she got down heavily and turned the body over on its back. She saw then that it was the Reverend Uriah Spragg, and that although the body was still warm he was quite dead. It needed Maria's calloused nature to regard the sight without turning ill. His face was no longer the face of Uriah Spragg, but she recognized him by the white hair, the rusty black clothes and the great hands that were like the cruel claws of a bird of prey. He had been beaten savagely from head to foot by some sharp instrument. Even his clothing had been ripped and torn in the mad fury of the attack.

There was no one in sight. The murder had been done at noonday on the county road in the very midst of the flat prairie where there was neither tree nor bush nor dwelling to hide the murderer.

All that day and during most of the night crowds streamed out the county road to stare morbidly at the spots of blood in the dust at the edge of the tall sweet clover. Crowds hung over the fence of the old house where they took Uriah's broken body back to his sister Annie. Crowds trampled the vulgar burdocks into the ground. No one saw Miss Annie Spragg save the sheriff and two sweating and stupid policemen who said that she received them in white gloves and took the news calmly enough—"Although that maybe was because she was cracked."

After three days they buried him, and Miss Annie