We shall not be surprised to find that the constable feeling thus, provided himself with another warrant.  Smarting under a sense of injury, both as a man and a baffled administrator of the law, he had immediately sought the Justice, revealed the loss of the instrument, and procured another.  Upon returning to the river, where he hoped to triumph in the presence of those who had witnessed his disgrace, over one whom he now regarded as an enemy, he found to his infinite mortification that the bird had flown.  He dared not follow alone, and meditating vengeance, he kept the fatal document safely deposited in his pocket-book, where “in grim repose” it waited for a favorable opportunity and its prey.

On the following Monday morning, the constable met Gladding in the street, whom he had not seen since the latter assisted him on the ice.

“How are you?” cried Tom, seizing him by the hand, and affecting the greatest pleasure at the meeting; “how do you feel after your row, friend Basset?”

“Oh, pretty well,” answered the constable; “how is it with you?

“Alive and kicking,” said Tom.  “But, Basset, you hain’t got the dents out o’ your hat, I see.”

“No, and I don’t expect they ever will come out.  It’s good as two dollars damage to me,” he added, taking off the hat and looking at it with a woeful face.  “You’re a little to blame for it, too, Tom.”

“Me!  You ongrateful critter,” exclaimed Gladding, indignantly.  “You want me to give you a new hat, don’t ye?”

“What made you ask if I’d got the warrant?”

“I never said no such a thing.  I only said sort o’ promiscuously, you hadn’t showed your document.”

“Well, what was the use o’ that?  If you’d kept still there wouldn’t been no fuss.”

“Who’d ha’ thought you’d ha’ gone to take a man without being able to show your authority?  Now I call that plaguy green, Basset.  But who stood by you when everybody else desarted you, and got you out from under them rough boys, and helped you clean out o’ the scrape?  Darn it all, Basset, you’re the ongratefullest varmint I ever did see, when, in a manner, I saved your life.  Really, I did think, instead o’ blowing a fellow up in this way, you’d a stood treat.”

“So I will,” said Basset, who began to fancy he had found too much fault, and was unwilling to lose his ally; “so come along into Jenkins’, and we’ll take it on the spot.  But you must give in, Tom, your observation was unfortunate”

“Unfortunate for you,” returned Tom; “but I guess Holden thought ’twasn’t unfortunate for him.  Howsomever, you’ll let the old fellow slip now, won’t you?”

“Let him slip!” almost screamed the exasperated Basset, whom Tom’s manner of treating the subject was not calculated to mollify.  “Let him slip, you say.  I’ll see him, I’ll see him”—­but in vain he sought words to express the direful purpose; language broke down under the effort.