Page:The Strange Case of Miss Annie Spragg (1928).djvu/83

 calmed her and Obadiah Spragg had bade her be silent, she turned and, pointing her finger, screamed at him: "There is the False Prophet. Him and his brother Jared. It took two of them to fill the place of the True Prophet. One wasn't good enough."

In their fear that God had chosen them for calamity the colony held a meeting in the open space before the Temple and four of the oldest followers of the Prophet, with prayer on their lips and despite the cries of "Sacrilege" from Jared and Obadiah Spragg, opened the door and entered the Temple. At the end of an hour they appeared again with terror in their eyes. The Temple was empty. There was no Prophet.

It was the end of the colony. Some sold their land and went away from the accursed ground and some stayed until better times brought prosperity. But the Spraggites were no more, and no one knows to this day what became of Cyrus Spragg. His son Obadiah declared that he had been taken to Heaven in a chariot of fire, but Obadiah was not Cyrus Spragg and he had neither the vigor nor the beauty nor the voice of Cyrus Spragg and none believed him.

In Des Moines the child of Eliza Weatherby was born. It was a boy and sickly, the child of the Prophet's old age. She christened it Alonzo for the Kentuckian and because she thought Alonzo a pretty name. But she refused to marry her lover. She died in the belief that he had murdered God.