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, millmen,
and school boys, 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.
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