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Updated: May 2, 2025
Should he accept it, or was it safer to ignore this pestilent disturber? Craft and anger thrust opposing counsels upon him. But determination of the issue came from outside. "Lemme through." From the outskirts of the crowd a rawboned giant forced his way inward. He was gaunt and unkempt as a weed in winter. "Here's trouble," remarked a man at the front. "Allus comes with a Hardscrabbler."
"So your chickens come home to roost, Professor," said the stranger, in a half-voice. "Impossible," declared the Professor, addressing the Hardscrabbler. "You misunderstood him." "They took my woman away. They took her to the 'sylum." Foreboding peril, the people nearest the uncouth visitor had drawn away.
While he sat reading proof on the status of a flickering foreign war, the Hardscrabbler's daughter, in a quiet back room farther down the block, slowly sipped more gin; and gin is fire and fury to the Hardscrabbler blood. At eleven o'clock that evening, Dr. Surtaine, returning to that massive hybrid of architecture which he called home, found Milly Neal waiting in his study.
"We physicians give what seems to us best, in these cases." "A reg'lar doctor from Burnham seen her," pursued the Hardscrabbler, in the same thin wail, moving nearer, but not again raising his eyes to the other's face. Instead, his gaze seemed fixed upon the man's shining expanse of waistcoat. "He said you doped her with the morpheean you give her."
I don't care for afterward. We're free, you and I. What's to hinder us from doing as we please? Who's going to be any the worse for it? Oh, I told you I was lawless. It's the Hardscrabbler blood in me, I guess." Deep in Hal's memory a response to that name stirred. "Somewhere," he said, "I have run across a Hardscrabbler before." "Me. But you've forgotten." "Have I? Let me see.
"Your job back and no questions asked," pursued Ellis, with an outer cheerfulness which cost him no small effort in the face of his growing conviction of some tragic issue pending. Now she looked directly at him, and there was a flicker of flame in her regard. "Do you know what a Hardscrabbler is, Ellis?" she asked. The other rubbed his head in puzzlement. "I don't believe I do," he confessed.
"What's a Hardscrabbler?" queried the well-dressed man. "Feller from the Hardscrabble Settlement over on Corsica Lake. Tough lot, they are. Make their own laws, when they want any; run their place to suit themselves. Ain't much they ain't up to. Hoss-stealin', barn-burnin', boot-leggin', an' murder thrown in when " "Be you the doctor was to Corsica Village two years ago?"
Well, I must get my little girl." The itinerant opened the door, looked, and beckoned. The boy lay on his pillow, the girl was curled in her chair, both fast asleep. Their hands were lightly clasped. Dr. Elliot lifted his ward and carried her away. The itinerant, returning to the Hardscrabbler girl, took her out to arrange the night's accommodation for her.
"I'll go after him and see that he marries you if it takes " "Oh, he'd be only too glad to marry me if he could. He can't. Poor Max has got a wife somewhere " "Max? It's Veltman!" cried Hal. "The dirty scoundrel." "Oh, don't blame Max," said the girl wearily. "It isn't his fault. After you threw me down" Hal winced "I started to run wild. It's the Hardscrabbler in me.
Carefully he swung the small form to his shoulder, and forced a way through the crowd, the little girl, who had followed him to the platform, composedly trotting along in his wake, while the Hardscrabbler, moaning from the pain of two broken ribs, was led away by a constable.
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