In his official capacity he was a relentless prosecutor.  The noun Clagett speedily turned itself into a verb; “to Clagett” meant “to prosecute;” they were convertible terms.  In spite of his industrious severity, and his royal emoluments, if such existed, the exchequer of the King’s Attorney showed a perpetual deficit.  The stratagems to which he resorted from time to time in order to raise unimportant sums reminded one of certain scenes in Moliere’s comedies.

Mr. Clagett had for his ame damnee a constable of the town.  They were made for each other; they were two flowers with but a single stem, and this was their method of procedure:  Mr. Clagett dispatched one of his servants to pick a quarrel with some countryman on the street, or some sailor drinking at an inn:  the constable arrested the sailor or the countryman, as the case might be, and hauled the culprit before Mr. Clagett; Mr. Clagett read the culprit a moral lesson, and fined him five dollars and costs.  The plunder was then divided between the conspirators—­two hearts that beat as one—­Clagett, of course, getting the lion’s share.  Justice was never administered in a simpler manner in any country.  This eminent legal light was extinguished in 1784, and the wick laid away in the little churchyard in Litchfield, New Hampshire.  It is a satisfaction, even after such a lapse of time, to know that Lettice survived the King’s Attorney sufficiently long to be very happy with somebody else.  Lettice Mitchel was scarcely eighteen when she married Wyseman Clagett.

About eighty years ago, a witless fellow named Tilton seems to have been a familiar figure on the streets of the old town.  Mr. Brewster speaks of him as “the well-known idiot, Johnny Tilton,” as if one should say, “the well-known statesman, Daniel Webster.”  It is curious to observe how any sort of individuality gets magnified in this parochial atmosphere, where everything lacks perspective, and nothing is trivial.  Johnny Tilton does not appear to have had much individuality to start with; it was only after his head was cracked that he showed any shrewdness whatever.  That happened early in his unobtrusive boyhood.  He had frequently watched the hens flying out of the loft window in his father’s stable, which stood in the rear of the Old Bell Tavern.  It occurred to Johnny, one day, that though he might not be as bright as other lads, he certainly was in no respect inferior to a hen.  So he placed himself on the sill of the window in the loft, flapped his arms, and took flight.  The New England Icarus alighted head downward, lay insensible for a while, and was henceforth looked upon as a mortal who had lost his wits.  Yet at odd moments his cloudiness was illumined by a gleam of intelligence such as had not been detected in him previous to his mischance.  As Polonius said of Hamlet—­another unstrung mortal—­Tilton’s replies had “a happiness that often madness hits on, which reason and sanity could not so prosperously