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 pedlar had discovered in
his own dealings with him, that he was a crusty old fellow, as close
as a vice.
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