Page:The Strange Case of Miss Annie Spragg (1928).djvu/294

 imagining the sound, and then to discover from what direction the sound came. Looking down he saw far below him, half hidden in mists so that it was visible one moment and not the next, a little procession which had a strange likeness to a procession of children on their way from a first communion. At the head walked sedately the black he-goat who wore the bell, and behind him came all the herd. In the rear, like the parents who followed the children, walked Miss Annie Spragg and Peppina. They seemed to be wearing wreaths on their heads and Miss Annie Spragg was without the black veil she always wore.

There was no way of descending directly to them and the puzzled man was forced to go by the tortuous narrow paths that led down among the rocks and trees. When he reached the bottom of the crevasse the procession had disappeared, but there remained in the red earth the neat little prints of goat's hoofs.

When he reached the farm once more it was quite light but he found that all his family were still asleep, and that beside the oven on her mattress of straw Peppina was also sleeping soundly. In the stable the goats were in their pen as they should have been and when he entered they pushed forward behind their leader, the black he-goat, to be led out to feed. And in the room overhead Miss Annie Spragg was asleep. On the floor beside her there were a few bruised and withered laurel leaves.

Thinking that he too must be possessed of a demon who had driven him out on the mountain in the middle of the night for nothing, the poor man