Page:The Strange Case of Miss Annie Spragg (1928).djvu/190

 ple primitive whistles but whole sets of pipes bound together with willow bark on which they could play tunes. He was skilful with his hands and gentle in working about beasts. At sixteen he was strong as a man and possessed of a strange dark beauty not to be found among the blond heavy German farmers. He went about in rags, his clothing torn by briars and barbed wire fences. Sometimes a farmer's wife gave him a shirt or an old pair of overalls. He had a dark skin with a fine high color, black curling hair, blue eyes and small ears that were pointed at the tips. He knew about weather and could tell the farmers when it would be safe to cut their hay and take in their wheat. There was really nothing very strange about him but the curious vacant look in his eyes, his strange love for beasts and his way of not seeming at times to understand when people spoke to him.

The year that he was sixteen his mother came back alone one morning from Lakeville and tried to explain to Shamus that his father was dead. He had fallen overboard from a rowboat and been drowned. At least that was what people thought. It was what Mary thought, for she didn't really know what had happened. She had awakened sober to find herself alone in the boat in the middle of the lake. Michael had disappeared. They made an effort to drag the lake but no trace was ever found of Shamus's father. There was a legend that the lake had no bottom; at least no one had been able to reach the bottom with a sounding line.

For a time Mary, sobered a little, gave up drinking and went again to working regularly. She be-