to put up at a tavern about five miles short of Parker's Falls. After
supper, lighting one of his prime cigars, he seated himself in the
bar-room and went through the story of the murder, which had grown so
fast that it took him half an hour to tell. There were as many as
twenty people in the room, nineteen of whom received it all for
gospel. But the twentieth was an elderly farmer who had arrived on
horseback a short time before and was now seated in a corner, smoking
his pipe. When the story was concluded, he rose up very deliberately,
brought his chair right in front of Dominicus and stared him full in
the face, puffing out the vilest tobacco-smoke the pedler had ever
smelt.

"Will you make affidavit," demanded he, in the tone of a
country-justice taking an examination, "that old Squire Higginbotham
of Kimballton was murdered in his orchard the night before last and
found hanging on his great pear tree yesterday morning?"

"I tell the story as I heard it, mister," answered Dominicus, dropping
his half-burnt cigar. "I don't say that I saw the thing done, so I
can't take my oath that he was murdered exactly in that way."

"But I can take mine," said the farmer, "that if Squire Higginbotham
was murdered night before last I drank a glass of bitters with his
ghost this morning. Being a neighbor of mine, he called me into his
store as I was riding by, and treated me, and then asked me to do a
little business for him on the road. He didn't seem to know any more
about his own murder than I did."

"Why, then it can't be a fact!" exclaimed Dominicus Pike.