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.

LITTLE ANNIE’S RAMBLE.

Ding-dong!  Ding-dong!  Ding-dong!

The town-crier has rung his bell at a distant corner, and little Annie stands on her father’s doorsteps trying to hear what the man with the loud voice is talking about.  Let me listen too.  Oh, he is telling the people that an elephant and a lion and a royal tiger and a horse with horns, and other strange beasts from foreign countries, have come to town and will receive all visitors who choose to wait upon them.  Perhaps little Annie would like to go?  Yes, and I can see that the pretty child is weary of this wide and pleasant street with the green trees flinging their shade across the quiet sunshine and the pavements and the sidewalks all as clean as if the housemaid had just swept them with her broom.  She feels that impulse to go strolling away—­that longing after the mystery of the great world—­which many children feel, and which I felt in my childhood.  Little Annie shall take a ramble with me.  See!  I do but hold out my hand, and like some bright bird in the sunny air, with her blue silk frock fluttering upward from her white pantalets, she comes bounding on tiptoe across the street.