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 pedlar
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.
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