It was as if he turned into air. Meanwhile
the bewilderment of the bride was dramatically painful. If McDonough
had been waylaid and killed, she could mourn for him. If he had deserted
her, she could wrap herself in her pride. But neither course lay open to
her, then or afterward. In one of the Twice Told Tales Hawthorne deals
with a man named Wakefield, who disappears with like suddenness,
and lives unrecognized for twenty years in a street not far from his
abandoned hearthside. Such expunging of one's self was not possible in
Portsmouth; but I never think of McDonough without recalling Wakefield.
I have an inexplicable conviction that for many a year James McDonough,
in some snug ambush, studied and analyzed the effect of his own
startling disappearance.

Some time in the year 1758, there dawned upon Portsmouth a personage
bearing the ponderous title of King's Attorney, and carrying much
gold lace about him. This gilded gentleman was Mr. Wyseman Clagett, of
Bristol, England, where his father dwelt on the manor of Broad Oaks,
in a mansion with twelve chimneys, and kept a coach and eight or ten
servants. Up to the moment of his advent in the colonies, Mr. Wyseman
Clagett had evidently not been able to keep anything but himself. His
wealth consisted of his personal decorations, the golden frogs on his
lapels, and the tinsel at his throat; other charms he had none. Yet with
these he contrived to dazzle the eyes of Lettice Mitchel, one of the
young beauties of the province, and to cause her to forget that she had
plighted troth with a Mr. Warner, then in Europe, and destined to return
home with a disturbed heart. Mr. Clagett was a man of violent temper and
ingenious vindictiveness, and proved more than a sufficient punishment
for Lettice's infidelity. The trifling fact that Warner was dead--he
died shortly after his return--did not interfere with the course of
Mr. Clagett's jealousy; he was haunted by the suspicion that Lettice
regretted her first love, having left nothing undone to make her do so.
"This is to pay Warner's debts," remarked Mr. Clagett, as he twitched
off the table-cloth and wrecked the tea-things.

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