Page:The Strange Case of Miss Annie Spragg (1928).djvu/188

 were a part of his brain that had never existed. The other children tormented him and so he came to play alone and to invent extraordinary games. At home his only playground was the railroad-tracks and there he found his way miraculously in and out among the locomotives and shunting trains. At nine he was still among the six-year-old children in the parish school. At ten he ran away four times within a month. Once he was missing for two days and Mary Bosanky, who loved the child with the love which mothers have for children who are different, wandered over the whole countryside searching for him. He was discovered at last on Ed Hasselman's farm by Maria Hazlett, Hasselman's housekeeper, asleep in a thicket in the midst of a flock of sheep. After that they gave up trying to teach him anything and he was allowed to run wild. When he was thirteen he began to have visions. He would fall down in a kind of trance and remain unconscious for hours and when he awakened he told wonderful stories of having been to Heaven and seen the golden streets and the angels walking about. He heard wonderful music and his great friend was Saint John the Shepherd.

Since neither Shamus nor drinking made life seem grand enough, Mary and Michael came to discover new ways of elevating their spirits. One way was their expeditions to a place called Lakeville, which was a sort of cheap summer resort for the Germans of Winnebago Falls. There was at Lakeville a