“I had the right of it,” he insisted.  “The only way to do with a person like him was to git your feathers and your kittle of tar cooked up all nice and gooey and git Potts on the ground and make a believer of him right there and then!” This he followed by his pointed reflection upon the administrative talents of Solon Denney—­“A hand of mush in a glove of the same!” When listeners were not by, he would mutter it to himself in sinister gutturals.

Nor was he alone in this spirit of dissatisfaction with Solon.  The too-trustful editor of the Argus was frankly derided.  He was a Boss at whom they laughed openly.  They waited, however, with interest for the subsequent issues of this paper.

The Banner that week contained the following bit of news:—­

=DASTARDLY ASSAULT IN BROAD DAYLIGHT=

=Early last Thursday evening, as Colonel J. Rodney Potts, dean of the Slocum County bar, was enjoying a quiet stroll along our beautiful river bank near Cady’s mill, he was set upon by a gang of ruffians and would have been foully dealt with but for his vigorous resistance.  Being a man of splendid proportions and a giant’s strength, the Colonel was making gallant headway against the cowardly miscreants when his foot slipped and he was precipitated into the chilling waters of the mill-race at a point where the city fathers have allowed it to remain uncovered.  Seeing their victim plunged into a watery grave, as they thought, the thugs took to their heels.  The Colonel extricated himself from his perilous plight, by dint of herculean strength, and started to pursue them, but they had disappeared from sight in the vicinity of Crowder & Fancett’s lumber yard.  Things have come to a pretty pass, we must say, if such a dastardly outrage as this should be allowed to go unpunished.  Now that Colonel Potts has brought suit against the city we suppose the council will have that mill-race covered.  We have repeatedly warned them about this.  We wonder if they ever heard a well-known saying about “locking the stable door after horse is stolen,” etc.=

=The card of Colonel Potts, printed elsewhere in this issue, is a sufficient refutation of the malicious gossip that has been handed back and forth lately that he had planned to leave Little Arcady.  It looks now like certain busybodies in this community had over-stepped themselves and been hoisted up by their own petard.  The Colonel is a fine man for County Judge, and we bespeak for him the suffrages of every voter who wants an honest judiciary.=

Westley Keyts, reading this, wanted to know what a petard was.  Inquiry disclosed that he hoped it might be something that could be used upon Potts to the advantage of almost every one concerned.  But in the minds of others of us an agonized suspicion now took form.  Had the letters been upon Potts when he went down?  Had they been saved?  Were they legible?  And would he use them?