Page:The Strange Case of Miss Annie Spragg (1928).djvu/295

 returned and roused his wife, telling her all that he had seen. Because he was confused and could not believe his senses they examined the beams above the oven to make certain there had ever been a fire. There had been a fire. The beams were all charred. They went to awaken Peppina but she could not be awakened. They struck her and called her evil names but the girl only slept on quietly. The smaller children wakened and began to scream with fright, and in all the confusion the father lost his head and sat down and wept. But his wife did not take leave of her senses. She cried out that their lodger was a witch and that she had known it all along and now they would be free of her at last. She went to the stable and roused Miss Annie Spragg, who said nothing in reply to the woman's abuse but packed her shabby bag in silence. Then the old maid set out along the road to Analo carrying her bag, her cage of little birds and her box of water colors. The wife followed her for three miles along the road, hiding from time to time in the bushes and behind rocks to watch and make certain that she did not return and to see whether she might not vanish abruptly into thin air.

When the figure of the old maid had disappeared at last on the serpentine road leading down the mountain to the high valley of Analo, the woman returned to the lonely farm and taking beeswax and three red hairs and seven nail parings from a little box, she moulded the beeswax into the image of the thin old maid and embedded the nail parings and the three hairs deep in the wax, and sticking a pin through the place where the heart should have been,