The intention, of course, was openly playful—­a not subtle sally meant to be read and forgotten.  Yet—­will it be credited?—­more than one of us read it so hurriedly, perhaps with so passionate a longing to have it the truth, as not to perceive its satirical indirections.  The rumor actually lived for a day that Potts was to disembarrass the town of his presence.

And then, from the fictitious stuff of this rumor was spawned a veritable inspiration.  Several of our most public-spirited citizens seemed to father it simultaneously.

“Why should Potts not leave town—­why should he not seek out a new field of effort?”

“Field of effort” was a rank bit of poesy, it being certain that Potts would never make an effort worthy of the name in any field whatsoever; but the sense of it was plain.

Increasingly with the years had plans been devised to alleviate the condition of Potts’s residence among us.  Some of these had required a too definite and artificial abruptness in the mechanics of his removal; others, like Eustace Eubanks’s plot for having all our best people refuse to notice him, depended upon a sensitiveness in the person aimed at which he did not possess.  Besides, there had been talk of disbarring him from the practice of his profession, and I, as a lawyer, had been urged to instigate that proceeding.  Unquestionably there was ground for it.

But now this random pleasantry of Solon Denney’s set our minds to working in another direction.

In the broad, pleasant window of the post-office, under the “No loafing here!” sign, half a dozen of us discussed it while we waited for the noon mail.  There seemed to be a half-formed belief that Potts might adroitly be made to perceive advantages in leaving us.

“It’s a whole lot better to manipulate and be subtle in a case like this,” suggested the editor of the Argus.  “Threats of violence, forcible expulsion, disbarment proceedings—­all crude—­and besides they won’t move Potts.  Jonas Rodney may not be gifted with a giant intellect, but he is cunning.”

“The cunning of a precocious boy,” prompted Eustace Eubanks, who was one of us.  “He is well aware that we would not dare attempt lawless violence.”

“Exactly, Eustace,” answered Solon.  “I tell you, gentlemen, this thriving little town needs a canning factory, as we all know; but more than a canning factory it needs a Boss,—­one of those strong characters that make tools of their fellow-men, who rule our cities with an iron hand but take care to keep the hand in a velvet glove,—­a Boss that is diplomatic, yet an autocrat.”

That careless use of the term “Boss” was afterward seen to be unfortunate for Solon.  They remembered it against him.

“That’s right,” said Westley Keyts.  “Let’s be diplomatic with him.”

“How would you begin, Westley, if you don’t mind telling us?” Solon had already begun to shape a scheme of his own.