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.