A young fellow, a tobacco-pedler by trade, was on his way from
Morristown, where he had dealt largely with the deacon of the Shaker
settlement, to the village of Parker’s Falls, on Salmon River. He had a
neat little cart painted green, with a box of cigars depicted on each
side-panel, and an Indian chief holding a pipe and a golden
tobacco-stalk on the rear. The pedler drove a smart little mare and was
a young man of excellent character, keen at a bargain, but none the
worse liked by the Yankees, who, as I have heard them say, would rather
be shaved with a sharp razor than a dull one. Especially was he beloved
by the pretty girls along the Connecticut, whose favor he used to court
by presents of the best smoking-tobacco in his stock, knowing well that
the country-lasses of New England are generally great performers on
pipes. Moreover, as will be seen in the course of my story, the pedler
was inquisitive and something of a tattler, always itching to hear the
news and anxious to tell it again.
After an early breakfast at Morristown the tobacco-pedler—whose name
was Dominicus Pike—had travelled seven miles through a solitary piece
of woods without speaking a word to anybody but himself and his little
gray mare. It being nearly seven o’clock, he was as eager to hold a
morning gossip as a city shopkeeper to read the morning paper. An
opportunity seemed at hand when, after lighting a cigar with a
sun-glass, he looked up and perceived a man coming over the brow of the
hill at the foot of which the pedler had stopped his green cart.
Dominicus watched him as he descended, and noticed that he carried a
bundle over his shoulder on the end of a stick and travelled with a
weary yet determined pace. He did not look as if he had started in the
freshness of the morning, but had footed it all night, and meant to do
the same all day.
“Good-morning, mister,” said Dominicus, when within speaking-distance.
“You go a pretty good jog. What’s the latest news at Parker’s Falls?”
The man pulled the broad brim of a gray hat over his eyes, and
answered, rather sullenly, that he did not come from Parker’s Falls,
which, as being the limit of his own day’s journey, the pedler had
naturally mentioned in his inquiry.
“Well, then,” rejoined Dominicus Pike, “let’s have the latest news
where you did come from. I’m not particular about Parker’s Falls. Any
place will answer.”
Being thus importuned, the traveller—who was as ill-looking a fellow as
one would desire to meet in a solitary piece of woods—appeared to
hesitate a little, as if he was either searching his memory for news or
weighing the expediency of telling it. At last, mounting on the step of
the cart, he whispered in the ear of Dominicus, though he might have
shouted aloud and no other mortal would have heard him.
“I do remember one little trifle of news,” said he. “Old Mr.
Higginbotham of Kimballton was murdered in his orchard at eight o’clock
last night by an Irishman and a nigger. They strung him up to the
branch of a St. Michael’s pear tree where nobody would find him till
the morning.”
As soon as this horrible intelligence was communicated the stranger
betook himself to his journey again with more speed than ever, not even
turning his head when Dominicus invited him to smoke a Spanish cigar
and relate all the particulars. The pedler whistled to his mare and
went up the hill, pondering on the doleful fate of Mr. Higginbotham,
whom he had known in the way of trade, having sold him many a bunch of
long nines and a great deal of pig-tail, lady’s twist and fig tobacco.
He was rather astonished at the rapidity with which the news had
spread. Kimballton was nearly sixty miles distant in a straight line;
the murder had been perpetrated only at eight o’clock the preceding
night, yet Dominicus had heard of it at seven in the morning, when, in
all probability, poor Mr. Higginbotham’s own family had but just
discovered his corpse hanging on the St. Michael’s pear tree. The
stranger on foot must have worn seven-league boots, to travel at such a
rate.
“Ill-news flies fast, they say,” thought Dominicus Pike, “but this
beats railroads. The fellow ought to be hired to go express with the
President’s message.”
The difficulty was solved by supposing that the narrator had made a
mistake of one day in the date of the occurrence; so that our friend
did not hesitate to introduce the story at every tavern and
country-store along the road, expending a whole bunch of Spanish
wrappers among at least twenty horrified audiences. He found himself
invariably the first bearer of the intelligence, and was so pestered
with questions that he could not avoid filling up the outline till it
became quite a respectable narrative. He met with one piece of
corroborative evidence. Mr. Higginbotham was a trader, and a former
clerk of his to whom Dominicus related the facts testified that the old
gentleman was accustomed to return home through the orchard about
nightfall with the money and valuable papers of the store in his
pocket. The clerk manifested but little grief at Mr. Higginbotham’s
catastrophe, hinting—what the pedler had discovered in his own dealings
with him—that he was a crusty old fellow as close as a vise. His
property would descend to a pretty niece who was now keeping school in
Kimballton.
What with telling the news for the public good and driving bargains for
his own, Dominicus was so much delayed on the road that he chose to put
up at a tavern about five miles short of Parker’s Falls. After supper,
lighting one of his prime cigars, he seated himself in the bar-room and
went through the story of the murder, which had grown so fast that it
took him half an hour to tell. There were as many as twenty people in
the room, nineteen of whom received it all for gospel. But the
twentieth was an elderly farmer who had arrived on horseback a short
time before and was now seated in a corner, smoking his pipe. When the
story was concluded, he rose up very deliberately, brought his chair
right in front of Dominicus and stared him full in the face, puffing
out the vilest tobacco-smoke the pedler had ever smelt.
“Will you make affidavit,” demanded he, in the tone of a
country-justice taking an examination, “that old Squire Higginbotham of
Kimballton was murdered in his orchard the night before last and found
hanging on his great pear tree yesterday morning?”
“I tell the story as I heard it, mister,” answered Dominicus, dropping
his half-burnt cigar. “I don’t say that I saw the thing done, so I
can’t take my oath that he was murdered exactly in that way.”
“But I can take mine,” said the farmer, “that if Squire Higginbotham
was murdered night before last I drank a glass of bitters with his
ghost this morning. Being a neighbor of mine, he called me into his
store as I was riding by, and treated me, and then asked me to do a
little business for him on the road. He didn’t seem to know any more
about his own murder than I did.”
“Why, then it can’t be a fact!” exclaimed Dominicus Pike.
“I guess he’d have mentioned, if it was,” said the old farmer; and he
removed his chair back to the corner, leaving Dominicus quite down in
the mouth.
Here was a sad resurrection of old Mr. Higginbotham! The pedler had no
heart to mingle in the conversation any more, but comforted himself
with a glass of gin and water and went to bed, where all night long he
dreamed of hanging on the St. Michael’s pear tree.
To avoid the old farmer (whom he so detested that his suspension would
have pleased him better than Mr. Higginbotham’s), Dominicus rose in the
gray of the morning, put the little mare into the green cart and
trotted swiftly away toward Parker’s Falls. The fresh breeze, the dewy
road and the pleasant summer dawn revived his spirits, and might have
encouraged him to repeat the old story had there been anybody awake to
bear it, but he met neither ox-team, light wagon, chaise, horseman nor
foot-traveller till, just as he crossed Salmon River, a man came
trudging down to the bridge with a bundle over his shoulder, on the end
of a stick.
“Good-morning, mister,” said the pedler, reining in his mare. “If you
come from Kimballton or that neighborhood, maybe you can tell me the
real fact about this affair of old Mr. Higginbotham. Was the old fellow
actually murdered two or three nights ago by an Irishman and a nigger?”
Dominicus had spoken in too great a hurry to observe at first that the
stranger himself had a deep tinge of negro blood. On hearing this
sudden question the Ethiopian appeared to change his skin, its yellow
hue becoming a ghastly white, while, shaking and stammering, he thus
replied:
“No, no! There was no colored man. It was an Irishman that hanged him
last night at eight o’clock; I came away at seven. His folks can’t have
looked for him in the orchard yet.”
Scarcely had the yellow man spoken, when he interrupted himself and,
though he seemed weary enough before, continued his journey at a pace
which would have kept the pedler’s mare on a smart trot. Dominicus
stared after him in great perplexity. If the murder had not been
committed till Tuesday night, who was the prophet that had foretold it
in all its circumstances on Tuesday morning? If Mr. Higginbotham’s
corpse were not yet discovered by his own family, how came the mulatto,
at above thirty miles’ distance, to know that he was hanging in the
orchard, especially as he had left Kimballton before the unfortunate
man was hanged at all? These ambiguous circumstances, with the
stranger’s surprise and terror, made Dominicus think of raising a
hue-and-cry after him as an accomplice in the murder, since a murder,
it seemed, had really been perpetrated.
“But let the poor devil go,” thought the pedler. “I don’t want his
black blood on my head, and hanging the nigger wouldn’t unhang Mr.
Higginbotham. Unhang the old gentleman? It’s a sin, I know, but I
should hate to have him come to life a second time and give me the
lie.”
With these meditations Dominicus Pike drove into the street of Parker’s
Falls, which, as everybody knows, is as thriving a village as three
cotton-factories and a slitting-mill can make it. The machinery was not
in motion and but a few of the shop doors unbarred when he alighted in
the stable-yard of the tavern and made it his first business to order
the mare four quarts of oats. His second duty, of course, was to impart
Mr. Higginbotham’s catastrophe to the hostler. He deemed it advisable,
however, not to be too positive as to the date of the direful fact, and
also to be uncertain whether it were perpetrated by an Irishman and a
mulatto or by the son of Erin alone. Neither did he profess to relate
it on his own authority or that of any one person, but mentioned it as
a report generally diffused.
The story ran through the town like fire among girdled trees, and
became so much the universal talk that nobody could tell whence it had
originated. Mr. Higginbotham was as well known at Parker’s Falls as any
citizen of the place, being part-owner of the slitting-mill and a
considerable stockholder in the cotton-factories. The inhabitants felt
their own prosperity interested in his fate. Such was the excitement
that the Parker’s Falls _Gazette_ anticipated its regular day of
publication, and came out with half a form of blank paper and a column
of double pica emphasized with capitals and headed “HORRID MURDER OF
MR. HIGGINBOTHAM!” Among other dreadful details, the printed account
described the mark of the cord round the dead man’s neck and stated the
number of thousand dollars of which he had been robbed; there was much
pathos, also, about the affliction of his niece, who had gone from one
fainting-fit to another ever since her uncle was found hanging on the
St. Michael’s pear tree with his pockets inside out. The village poet
likewise commemorated the young lady’s grief in seventeen stanzas of a
ballad. The selectmen held a meeting, and in consideration of Mr.
Higginbotham’s claims on the town determined to issue handbills
offering a reward of five hundred dollars for the apprehension of his
murderers and the recovery of the stolen property.
Meanwhile, the whole population of Parker’s Falls, consisting of
shopkeepers, mistresses of boarding-houses, factory-girls, mill-men and
schoolboys, rushed into the street and kept up such a terrible
loquacity as more than compensated for the silence of the
cotton-machines, which refrained from their usual din out of respect to
the deceased. Had Mr. Higginbotham cared about posthumous renown, his
untimely ghost would have exulted in this tumult.
Our friend Dominicus in his vanity of heart forgot his intended
precautions, and, mounting on the town-pump, announced himself as the
bearer of the authentic intelligence which had caused so wonderful a
sensation. He immediately became the great man of the moment, and had
just begun a new edition of the narrative with a voice like a
field-preacher when the mail-stage drove into the village street. It
had travelled all night, and must have shifted horses at Kimballton at
three in the morning.
“Now we shall hear all the particulars!” shouted the crowd.
The coach rumbled up to the piazza of the tavern followed by a thousand
people; for if any man had been minding his own business till then, he
now left it at sixes and sevens to hear the news. The pedler, foremost
in the race, discovered two passengers, both of whom had been startled
from a comfortable nap to find themselves in the centre of a mob. Every
man assailing them with separate questions, all propounded at once, the
couple were struck speechless, though one was a lawyer and the other a
young lady.
“Mr. Higginbotham! Mr. Higginbotham! Tell us the particulars about old
Mr. Higginbotham!” bawled the mob. “What is the coroner’s verdict? Are
the murderers apprehended? Is Mr. Higginbotham’s niece come out of her
fainting-fits? Mr. Higginbotham! Mr. Higginbotham!”
The coachman said not a word except to swear awfully at the hostler for
not bringing him a fresh team of horses. The lawyer inside had
generally his wits about him even when asleep; the first thing he did
after learning the cause of the excitement was to produce a large red
pocketbook. Meantime, Dominicus Pike, being an extremely polite young
man, and also suspecting that a female tongue would tell the story as
glibly as a lawyer’s, had handed the lady out of the coach. She was a
fine, smart girl, now wide awake and bright as a button, and had such a
sweet, pretty mouth that Dominicus would almost as lief have heard a
love-tale from it as a tale of murder.
“Gentlemen and ladies,” said the lawyer to the shopkeepers, the
mill-men and the factory-girls, “I can assure you that some
unaccountable mistake—or, more probably, a wilful falsehood maliciously
contrived to injure Mr. Higginbotham’s credit—has excited this singular
uproar. We passed through Kimballton at three o’clock this morning, and
most certainly should have been informed of the murder had any been
perpetrated. But I have proof nearly as strong as Mr. Higginbotham’s
own oral testimony in the negative. Here is a note relating to a suit
of his in the Connecticut courts which was delivered me from that
gentleman himself. I find it dated at ten o’clock last evening.”
So saying, the lawyer, exhibited the date and signature of the note,
which irrefragably proved either that this perverse Mr. Higginbotham
was alive when he wrote it, or, as some deemed the more probable case
of two doubtful ones, that he was so absorbed in worldly business as to
continue to transact it even after his death. But unexpected evidence
was forthcoming. The young lady, after listening to the pedler’s
explanation, merely seized a moment to smooth her gown and put her
curls in order, and then appeared at the tavern door, making a modest
signal to be heard.
“Good people,” said she, “I am Mr. Higginbotham’s niece.”
A wondering murmur passed through the crowd on beholding her so rosy
and bright—that same unhappy niece whom they had supposed, on the
authority of the Parker’s Falls _Gazette_, to be lying at death’s door
in a fainting-fit. But some shrewd fellows had doubted all along
whether a young lady would be quite so desperate at the hanging of a
rich old uncle.
“You see,” continued Miss Higginbotham, with a smile, “that this
strange story is quite unfounded as to myself, and I believe I may
affirm it to be equally so in regard to my dear uncle Higginbotham. He
has the kindness to give me a home in his house, though I contribute to
my own support by teaching a school. I left Kimballton this morning to
spend the vacation of commencement-week with a friend about five miles
from Parker’s Falls. My generous uncle, when he heard me on the stairs,
called me to his bedside and gave me two dollars and fifty cents to pay
my stage-fare, and another dollar for my extra expenses. He then laid
his pocketbook under his pillow, shook hands with me, and advised me to
take some biscuit in my bag instead of breakfasting on the road. I feel
confident, therefore, that I left my beloved relative alive, and trust
that I shall find him so on my return.”
The young lady courtesied at the close of her speech, which was so
sensible and well worded, and delivered with such grace and propriety,
that everybody thought her fit to be preceptress of the best academy in
the State. But a stranger would have supposed that Mr. Higginbotham was
an object of abhorrence at Parker’s Falls and that a thanksgiving had
been proclaimed for his murder, so excessive was the wrath of the
inhabitants on learning their mistake. The mill-men resolved to bestow
public honors on Dominicus Pike, only hesitating whether to tar and
feather him, ride him on a rail or refresh him with an ablution at the
town-pump, on the top of which he had declared himself the bearer of
the news. The selectmen, by advice of the lawyer, spoke of prosecuting
him for a misdemeanor in circulating unfounded reports, to the great
disturbance of the peace of the commonwealth. Nothing saved Dominicus
either from mob-law or a court of justice but an eloquent appeal made
by the young lady in his behalf. Addressing a few words of heartfelt
gratitude to his benefactress, he mounted the green cart and rode out
of town under a discharge of artillery from the schoolboys, who found
plenty of ammunition in the neighboring clay-pits and mud-holes. As he
turned his head to exchange a farewell glance with Mr. Higginbotham’s
niece a ball of the consistence of hasty-pudding hit him slap in the
mouth, giving him a most grim aspect. His whole person was so
bespattered with the like filthy missiles that he had almost a mind to
ride back and supplicate for the threatened ablution at the town-pump;
for, though not meant in kindness, it would now have been a deed of
charity.
However, the sun shone bright on poor Dominicus, and the mud—an emblem
of all stains of undeserved opprobrium—was easily brushed off when dry.
Being a funny rogue, his heart soon cheered up; nor could he refrain
from a hearty laugh at the uproar which his story had excited. The
handbills of the selectmen would cause the commitment of all the
vagabonds in the State, the paragraph in the Parker’s Falls _Gazette_
would be reprinted from Maine to Florida, and perhaps form an item in
the London newspapers, and many a miser would tremble for his moneybags
and life on learning the catastrophe of Mr. Higginbotham. The pedler
meditated with much fervor on the charms of the young schoolmistress,
and swore that Daniel Webster never spoke nor looked so like an angel
as Miss Higginbotham while defending him from the wrathful populace at
Parker’s Falls.
Dominicus was now on the Kimballton turnpike, having all along
determined to visit that place, though business had drawn, him out of
the most direct road from Morristown. As he approached the scene of the
supposed murder he continued to revolve the circumstances in his mind,
and was astonished at the aspect which the whole case assumed. Had
nothing occurred to corroborate the story of the first traveller, it
might now have been considered as a hoax; but the yellow man was
evidently acquainted either with the report or the fact, and there was
a mystery in his dismayed and guilty look on being abruptly questioned.
When to this singular combination of incidents it was added that the
rumor tallied exactly with Mr. Higginbotham’s character and habits of
life, and that he had an orchard and a St. Michael’s pear tree, near
which he always passed at nightfall, the circumstantial evidence
appeared so strong that Dominicus doubted whether the autograph
produced by the lawyer, or even the niece’s direct testimony, ought to
be equivalent. Making cautious inquiries along the road, the pedler
further learned that Mr. Higginbotham had in his service an Irishman of
doubtful character whom he had hired without a recommendation, on the
score of economy.
“May I be hanged myself,” exclaimed Dominicus Pike, aloud, on reaching
the top of a lonely hill, “if I’ll believe old Higginbotham is unhanged
till I see him with my own eyes and hear it from his own mouth. And, as
he’s a real shaver, I’ll have the minister, or some other responsible
man, for an endorser.”
It was growing dusk when he reached the toll-house on Kimballton
turnpike, about a quarter of a mile from the village of this name. His
little mare was fast bringing him up with a man on horseback who
trotted through the gate a few rods in advance of him, nodded to the
toll-gatherer and kept on towards the village. Dominicus was acquainted
with the toll-man, and while making change the usual remarks on the
weather passed between them.
“I suppose,” said the pedler, throwing back his whiplash to bring it
down like a feather on the mare’s flank, “you have not seen anything of
old Mr. Higginbotham within a day or two?”
“Yes,” answered the toll-gatherer; “he passed the gate just before you
drove up, and yonder he rides now, if you can see him through the dusk.
He’s been to Woodfield this afternoon, attending a sheriff’s sale
there. The old man generally shakes hands and has a little chat with
me, but to-night he nodded, as if to say, ‘Charge my toll,’ and jogged
on; for, wherever he goes, he must always be at home by eight o’clock.”
“So they tell me,” said Dominicus.
“I never saw a man look so yellow and thin as the squire does,”
continued the toll-gatherer. “Says I to myself tonight, ‘He’s more like
a ghost or an old mummy than good flesh and blood.’”
The pedler strained his eyes through the twilight, and could just
discern the horseman now far ahead on the village road. He seemed to
recognize the rear of Mr. Higginbotham, but through the evening shadows
and amid the dust from the horse’s feet the figure appeared dim and
unsubstantial, as if the shape of the mysterious old man were faintly
moulded of darkness and gray light.
Dominicus shivered. “Mr. Higginbotham has come back from the other
world by way of the Kimballton turnpike,” thought he. He shook the
reins and rode forward, keeping about the same distance in the rear of
the gray old shadow till the latter was concealed by a bend of the
road. On reaching this point the pedler no longer saw the man on
horseback, but found himself at the head of the village street, not far
from a number of stores and two taverns clustered round the
meeting-house steeple. On his left was a stone wall and a gate, the
boundary of a wood-lot beyond which lay an orchard, farther still a
mowing-field, and last of all a house. These were the premises of Mr.
Higginbotham, whose dwelling stood beside the old highway, but had been
left in the background by the Kimballton turnpike.
Dominicus knew the place, and the little mare stopped short by
instinct, for he was not conscious of tightening the reins. “For the
soul of me, I cannot get by this gate!” said he, trembling. “I never
shall be my own man again till I see whether Mr. Higginbotham is
hanging on the St. Michael’s pear tree.” He leaped from the cart, gave
the rein a turn round the gate-post, and ran along the green path of
the wood-lot as if Old Nick were chasing behind. Just then the village
clock tolled eight, and as each deep stroke fell Dominicus gave a fresh
bound and flew faster than before, till, dim in the solitary centre of
the orchard, he saw the fated pear tree. One great branch stretched
from the old contorted trunk across the path and threw the darkest
shadow on that one spot. But something seemed to struggle beneath the
branch.
The pedler had never pretended to more courage than befits a man of
peaceable occupation, nor could he account for his valor on this awful
emergency. Certain it is, however, that he rushed forward, prostrated a
sturdy Irishman with the butt-end of his whip, and found—not, indeed,
hanging on the St. Michael’s pear tree, but trembling beneath it with a
halter round his neck—the old identical Mr. Higginbotham.
“Mr. Higginbotham,” said Dominicus, tremulously, “you’re an honest man,
and I’ll take your word for it. Have you been hanged, or not?”
If the riddle be not already guessed, a few words will explain the
simple machinery by which this “coming event” was made to cast its
“shadow before.” Three men had plotted the robbery and murder of Mr.
Higginbotham; two of them successively lost courage and fled, each
delaying the crime one night by their disappearance; the third was in
the act of perpetration, when a champion, blindly obeying the call of
fate, like the heroes of old romance, appeared in the person of
Dominicus Pike.
It only remains to say that Mr. Higginbotham took the pedler into high
favor, sanctioned his addresses to the pretty schoolmistress and
settled his whole property on their children, allowing themselves the
interest. In due time the old gentleman capped the climax of his favors
by dying a Christian death in bed; since which melancholy event,
Dominicus Pike has removed from Kimballton and established a large
tobacco-manufactory in my native village.