Page:The Strange Case of Miss Annie Spragg (1928).djvu/81

 girl resisted him because she could not marry an infidel and urged him to become converted.

The suitor was a young man and quite out of his head with love and desire for the pretty Eliza Weatherby and at length, when she remained firm, he was driven beyond endurance. He expressed a desire to be converted and under Obadiah Spragg, eldest son of the Prophet, he began a course of instruction. What he learned there was never known, for the secrets of the sect were well guarded, but it caused him to violate the Temple. He discovered that Eliza was among the virgins chosen to serve the Prophet and on the day she was called to enter the sanctuary the Kentuckian broke in the door. A passing woman heard three shots of a pistol and saw him emerge and leap on his horse and ride off, not toward Omaha but toward the West. A little while later Eliza Weatherby ran screaming into the street crying out that her lover had murdered God.

A crowd gathered about the Temple, but none dared enter to violate its sanctity save the woman chosen to serve on that day, and as Eliza Weatherby had fallen into a faint that lasted until nightfall, she could not enter. So they waited, praying until morning of the next day, when the young woman chosen went into the Temple. All day they waited for her to emerge and when at last she came out she bore a revelation written by the Prophet. It read, "Fear not, my people. Thy God is immortal." The young woman told them that a darkness had descended upon the Temple and that she had not seen the Prophet's face. 