“Well,” said Gladding, who all this while had been leisurely whittling a bit of white pine, “well, Basset, you know your own business best, and I’m not a man to interfere.  My principle is, let every man skin his own skunks.  You haint no wife nor children, have you?”

“No,” said Basset.  “What makes you ask?”

“Well, I’m glad to hear it.  I always think it judgmatical, you see, to choose a man for constable who haint got no family; ’cause, if any accident should happen, ’twouldn’t be of so much consequence.”

“I don’t catch your meaning clear,” said Basset.

“You’ll catch it clear enough, I guess,” answered Gladding, “if Holden gits hold o’ ye.”

“Now, Tom Gladding, you needn’t think you’re going to frighten me,” cried Basset, on whom the charm was beginning to work.

“I never had sich an idea,” said Tom.  “But folks does say he’s a desperate fighting character.  Did you never hear tell of Kidd the pirate, and his treasures, ever so much gold and silver, and rings and watches, and all sorts o’ trinkets and notions, buried somewhere along shore, or perhaps on the old fellow’s island?  Folks does say that when it was kivered, two men was murdered on the spot, so that their sperits should watch it, and hender other folks from gitting on’t.  But them may be all lies.  I heard tell, too,” he added, bending down towards the constable, and speaking in a low, confidential tone, as if he wished to be overheard by no one, “that Holden’s Kidd himself; but I don’t believe a word on’t.  I tell you this as a friend of your’n, and I advise you to be prudent.”

Poor Basset left the shop, with a much less confident air than that with which he had entered it.  The truth is, he had in his pocket, all the while, a warrant issued by Squire Miller to arrest Holden, which he now most heartily wished he had never burnt his fingers with.  He had heard before, the strange stories in circulation about the Solitary, but had listened to them with only a vague feeling of curiosity, without any personal interest therein, so that no impression of any consequence had been made upon his mind.  But now the case was different.  The matter was brought home to his own bosom.  Here was he, Constable Basset, required and commanded, “by authority of the State of Connecticut,” to arrest a man of the most violent character, “for,” said Basset to himself, “he must be a dangerous fellow, else how would he venture to insult a whole conference?  Tom Gladding’s more’n half right, and I must look sharp.”  Gladly would he have abandoned the whole business, notwithstanding his cupidity was not a little excited by the fees, but he doubted whether the sheriff, his deputy, or any other constable would execute the warrant in his stead; nor did any plausible excuse present itself to account for transferring it to other hands.  Thus musing, with fear and avarice contending in his breast, he walked up the street.  But it may be necessary to tell how Basset got into the dilemma, and, in order to do so, we must retrace our steps.