Esau Hardery Author:William Osborn Stoddard Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER V. A REMARKABLE PIECE OF HOME MISSIONARY WORK. Dr. Edgerton had carried away the big rattlesnake ; but the knot of busy idlers at Topping's drug-store... more » could hold itself together for a while by talking about it. More than one reference was made to the excellence of Topping's soda-water and ginger pop, and to the number of cigars which could be purchased with two dollars. " You got a pretty good price for your snake, Job." " Well, he didn't stand me in much more'n a quart of milk." " Two dollars a quart's a right good milk market." " D'ye know what that there money's goin' for?" " Don't know. Unless you mean to treat the crowd." " I'll tell ye, then. It's to Elder Lockerman's sal'ry. I'm goin' to subscribe one rattlesnake, two dollars." " It'll take jest two hundred snakes to pay him. 'Twon't do, Job, there ain't enough on 'em. Unless we kin find a feller like that tramp was tellin' of, and git 'em out of his boots.". " Where's he gone, anyhow ?" " Did any of ye ever see him before ?" 48 A CRUEL PROPOSAL. Not one could say he had, and all they now knew about him was that he had disappeared. He had been in no manner of hurry about it, though he had turned away a little suddenly from the doctor and his jar of drowned rattlesnake. For a few rods he had slouched along the street in silence, the keen, dark eyes under his heavy brows seeming to take in everything around him as he went. "Queer," he muttered, at last. "Who'd have thought of me being stung by a dead rattlesnake. In a glass jar. Drunk and drowned. Seems to me I can feel it, though." The battered, broad-brimmed felt hat that crowned his gaunt, powerful frame received another jerk forward at that moment, and the curious stare of Binns the blacksmith, as that worthy paus...« less