The Boss of Little Arcady | Page 5

pulling in calculation at his little chin-whisker, "let us do it thoroughly. A hundred dollars can't take Potts any too far. We must see that he keeps going until he could never get back--" We all nodded to this.
"--and another thing, the farther away from this town those letters are read,--why, the better for our reputations."
A hundred dollars it was. Purse and letters were turned over to Solon Denney to deliver to Potts. The Argus came out with its promised eulogy, a thing so fulsome that any human being but J. Rodney Potts would have sickened to read it of himself.
But our little town was elated. One could observe that last day a subdued but confident gayety along its streets as citizens greeted one another.
On every hand were good fellowship and kind words, the light-hearted salute, the joyous mien. It was an occasion that came near to being festal, and Solon Denney was its hero. He sought to bear his honors with the modesty that is native to him, but in his heart he knew that we now spoke of him glibly as the Boss of Little Arcady, and the consciousness of it bubbled in his manner in spite of him.
When it was all over,--though I had not once raised my voice in protest, and had frankly connived with the others,--I confess that I felt shame for us and pity for the friendless man we were sending out into the world. Something childlike in his acceptance of the proposal, a few phrases of naive enthusiasm for his new prospects, repeated to me by Solon, touched me strangely. It was, therefore, with real embarrassment that I read the Argus notice. "With profound regret," it began, "we are obliged to announce to our readers the determination of our distinguished fellow-townsman, Colonel J. Rodney Potts, to shake the dust of Little Arcady from his feet. Deaf to entreaties from our leading citizens, the gallant Colonel has resolved that in simple justice to himself he must remove to some larger field of action, where his native genius, his flawless probity, and his profound learning in the law may secure for him those richer rewards which a man of his unusual caliber commendably craves and so abundantly merits."
There followed an overflowing half-column of warmest praise, embodying felicitations to the unnamed city so fortunate as to secure this "peerless pleader and Prince of Gentlemen." It ended with the assurance that Colonel Potts would take with him the cordial good-will of every member of a community to which he had endeared himself, no less by his sterling civic virtues than by his splendid qualities of mind and heart.
The thing filled me with an indignant pity. I tried in vain to sleep. In the darkness of night our plan came to seem like an atrocious outrage upon a guileless, defenceless ne'er-do-well. For my share of the guilt, I resolved to convey to Potts privately on the morrow a more than perfunctory promise of aid, should he find himself distressed at any time in what he would doubtless term his new field of endeavor.
CHAPTER II
THE GOLDEN DAY OF COLONEL POTTS
I awoke the next morning under most vivid portents of calamity. I believe I am neither notional, nor given to small, vulgar superstitions, but I have learned that this peculiar sensation is never without significance. I remember that I felt it the night our wagon bridge went out by high water. I tried to read the presentiment as I dressed. But not until I was shaving did it relate itself to the going out of Potts. Then the illumination came with a speed so electric that I gashed my chin under the shock of it. Instantly I seemed to know, as well as I know to-day, that the Potts affair had, in some manner, been botched.
So apprehensive was I that I lingered an hour on my little riverside porch, dreading the events that I felt the day must unfold. Inevitably, however, I was drawn to the centre of things. Turning down Main Street at the City Hotel corner, on the way to my office, I had to pass the barber-shop of Harpin Cust, in front of which I found myself impelled to stop. Looking over the row of potted geraniums in the window, I beheld Colonel Potts in the chair, swathed to the chin in the barber's white cloth, a gaze of dignified admiration riveted upon his counterpart in the mirror. Seen thus, he was not without a similarity to pictures of the Matterhorn, his bare, rugged peak rising fearsomely above his snow-draped bulk. Harpin appeared to be putting the last snipping touches to the Colonel's too-long neglected side-whiskers. On the table lay his hat and gold-headed cane, and close at hand stood his bulging valise.
I walked hastily on. The