Page:The Strange Case of Miss Annie Spragg (1928).djvu/25

 erine herself had witnessed the scars because she had prayed that they be made invisible to others. And then, as he pointed out in his work, she had also a great motive in the rivalry between the Franciscans, who claimed the miracle for the founder of their order, and the Dominicans, of which she was in reality, if not in name, the head. Pope Sixtus IV had issued a decree at that time giving a monopoly of the miracle to Saint Francis and making it a censurable offense to mention Saint Catherine's experience as authentic. Saint Catherine, Mr. Winnery thought, was a powerful but not a very original woman.

But Miss Annie Spragg was neither Dominican nor Franciscan. Indeed, no one seemed to know whether she was anything at all.

For at least fifteen years Miss Annie Spragg had been one of the sights of Brinoë, like the Etruscan excavations, and so Winnery had seen her countless times. But it was not until she was dead that he, in common with the rest of the world, learned her name. Today it was a name printed in newspapers all over the world. . . . In Paris, New York, Milan, Bombay, Copenhagen. . . . Tired journalists had arrived in Brinoë from Rome and Paris and Milan to report upon the mysterious happening.

For at least fifteen years Miss Annie Spragg had wandered the streets regardless of heat or cold, storm or sunshine—an eccentric old maid whom the Italians looked upon merely as one of the phenomena of a generous Nature, and whom the foreign colony resented as something a little shameful. She seemed never to have had but one costume.