Here was a sad resurrection of old Mr. Higginbotham! The pedler had no heart to mingle in the conversation any more, but comforted himself with a glass of gin and water and went to bed, where, all night long, he dreamt of hanging on the St. Michael’s pear-tree. To avoid the old farmer (whom he so detested that his suspension would have pleased him better than Mr. Higginbotham’s), Dominicus rose in the grey of the morning, put the little mare into the green cart, and trotted swiftly away towards Parker’s Falls. The fresh breeze, the dewy road, and the pleasant summer dawn revived his spirits, and might have encouraged him to repeat the old story had there been anybody awake to hear it. But he met neither ox-team, light waggon, chaise, horseman, nor foot-traveller, till just as he crossed Salmon River a man came trudging down to the bridge with a bundle over his shoulder on the end of a stick. “Good morning, mister,” said the pedler, reining in his mare; “if you come from Kimballton or that neighbourhood maybe you can tell me the real facts about the affair of old Mr. Higginbotham. Was the old fellow actually murdered two or three nights ago by an Irishman and a nigger?” Dominicus had spoken in too great a hurry to observe at first that the stranger himself had a deep tinge of negro blood. On hearing this sudden question the Ethiopian appeared to change his skin, its yellow hue becoming a ghastly white, while shaking and stammering he thus replied— “No! no! There was no coloured man! It was an Irishman that hanged him last night at eight o’clock. I came away at seven! His folks can’t have looked for him in the orchard yet.” 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 sharp 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 won’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!”