Page:The Strange Case of Miss Annie Spragg (1928).djvu/165

 dropped the case and annoyed her no more, and the mystery remained unsolved, an epic in the history of a town where little ever happened. Some even felt a little sorry for her when the stories got about that she had been beaten and branded by her brother, but none approached her save drunken old Mary Bosanky.

She went away at last, so quietly that no one knew she had gone until long afterward. Only Mrs. Bosanky knew where she had gone, for she had asked her and received the answer, "To Italy." And when Mrs. Bosanky asked her why, she had answered, "Because I lived there once." And Mrs. Bosanky, who could neither read nor write, thought Italy must be a town in the next county and took no more notice of it. 

E was born of mixed blood. On his father's side he was French and on his mother's Italian, and the two bloods had been at war within him since the day he was born. Until the day he died they would battle there in his body and in his mind. In youth the struggle had been incomplete and confused, but with age the two demons came to divide, each withdrawing a little into his own corner, and with the clearness of division there had come a certain peace, for Father d'Astier understood that he was two persons and not one and that there was no merging the one into the other. The one man was