Page:The Strange Case of Miss Annie Spragg (1928).djvu/256

 copy of The Little Flowers of Saint Francis and from her bag she took the stub of a worn blue pencil. She put the pencil in Annie Spragg's hand and opening the book held it for her to write. Slowly and with pain the dying woman scrawled seven words and when she had finished the pencil dropped from her hands and the eyelids drooped again. There was a faint sigh filled with weariness and Sister Annunziata commended her soul to the care of Saint Francis of the Birds.

They laid her back upon the bed and Sister Annunziata opened the page where she had written. At first she could make nothing of the scrawl and peered at it for a long time with her swollen red eyes. Then slowly she understood it. The old woman had written,

''Open the window. Let them be free.''

When Father Baldessare loosened the heavy shutters the first faint color of dawn had begun to rise behind the mountains and the rosy grey light was filtering down among the ancient ghost-filled houses that surrounded the Palazzo Gonfarini. As he stood there for a moment looking out into the hot empty street there was a faint rushing sound all about him. It was the little birds flying past him, chirping and twittering, into the rising dawn. The air was filled with the sound of wings.

After Father Baldessare had gone again, Sister Annunziata drew the sheet over the face of the dead woman and closing the door gently behind her went down the long corridor and the great stone stairway to seek a bowl of hot coffee. She needed it in order to keep her weary eyes open any longer and she