Twice-Told Tales (13 page)

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."