Page:The Strange Case of Miss Annie Spragg (1928).djvu/271

 It was four o'clock when she awakened at last and went down into the garden to attend to the business of reburying the hateful statue. When she saw it again, the halo of evil surrounding it struck her even more forcibly. It was only after the reflection of the wakeful night that she realized its full significance. Why, she saw now that portions of the statue had been stained, perhaps nineteen centuries earlier, in an obscene fashion.

In bad Italian and with the aid of much pantomime, she finally conveyed to the workmen her idea. When at last they understood her they exploded in a wild burst of protest. She was unable to understand any of it, though she understood well enough that they were in a tremendous state of excitement. They all screamed at her at once. In the very midst of the uproar Pietro, the old goatherd, who lived on the hillside below the villa, suddenly appeared bearing two melons and a branch laden with green olives. He was an immensely old man, dirty and unkempt, with a scraggly grey beard and pointed ears that stuck through apertures in the matted long grey hair. He walked with a limp sidewise like a crab. At sight of her he removed his battered hat and gave her a series of grovelling bows.

At first she thought he had brought the melons and olive branch as a gift for herself and touched by the picturesqueness of Italian customs, she quickly assumed the gracious manner of a chatelaine and came forward to receive the offering. But Pietro made it certain that they were not for her. As if he thought that she meant to take them from him by force, he cunningly shifted them behind his back