Page:The Strange Case of Miss Annie Spragg (1928).djvu/289

 little Italian but she was never really able to converse in that tongue.

In the third year after the janitress came to the Palazzo Gonfarini, Miss Annie Spragg came one day and asked her if she knew where there was a place she could go in the mountains to pass a month now and then. It must be very cheap, she said, because she had no money, and she would like it to be in some rather remote region where she would not be troubled by tourists. Signora Bardelli thought at once of her sister-in-law who lived in a village called Bestia, high in a remote part of the mountains. She sent word by a cousin (since neither the sister-in-law nor her husband could read) and received an answer that they would be glad of the money to be got by having the visitor. It was arranged to meet Miss Annie Spragg at Analo, which was the terminal of the railroad. Beyond Analo there were only mountain roads and donkey carts.

It was a wild country, said the janitress, which she had not seen since childhood. There were a few olive orchards and herds of goats and half-way down the mountains they were able to grow vines in the crevices of the volcanic rock. There were wolves which in winter became ferocious and sometimes attacked people in remote villages and farms. At Bestia there was no church and the inhabitants were forced to drive all the way to Analo to communicate with a priest. Therefore, they seldom saw priests except when someone died or was born. Sometimes children grew to manhood and womanhood and died without ever being received into the