"Hawthorne, Nathaniel - Mr. Higginbotham's Castrophe" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hawthorne Nathaniel)

his own dealings with him, that he was a crusty old fellow, as close
as a vice. His property would descend to a pretty niece who was now
keeping school in Kimballton.

What with telling the news for the public good, and driving
bargains for his own, Dominicus was so much delayed on the road that
he chose 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 pedlar 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.

"I guess he'd have mentioned, if it was," said the old farmer;
and he removed his chair back to the corner, leaving Dominicus quite
down in the mouth.

Here was a sad resurrection of old Mr. Higginbotham! The pedlar 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 dreamed 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
gray 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