replied:

"No, no! There was no colored 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 smart 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 wouldn'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."

With these meditations Dominicus Pike drove into the street of
Parker's Falls, which, as everybody knows, is as thriving a village as
three cotton-factories and a slitting-mill can make it. The machinery
was not in motion and but a few of the shop doors unbarred when he