Superficially and distantly considered, the woman from whom even J. Rodney Potts must flee in terror would not be of a sort to excite the imagination pleasurably.  A less impulsive man than Solon Denney might have found cause for misgiving in this circumstance of Potts’s prompt exodus.  In the immediate flush of his triumph, however, the editor of the Argus had no leisure for negative reflections, and when misgiving did at last find root in his mind, the time had come for him to receive the lady.  But Solon Denney was not the man to betray it if a doubting heart beat within his breast.  To the town that now lavished admiration upon him, dubbing him “Boss” without ulterior implications, he was confidence itself, and rife with prophecies of benefit to be derived by our public from the advent of Mrs. Aurelia Potts.  With a gallant show of anticipation, a sprig of geranium in his lapel, he set out for the train on that fateful morning, while Little Arcady awaited his return with a cordial curiosity.

It was a gray day of damp air and a dull, thick sky bearing down upon the earth—­a day conducive to forebodings.  But Solon Denney’s spirit, to the best of Little Arcady’s belief, soared aloft to realms of pure sunlight.

My knowledge of subsequent events that day was gained partly by word of mouth and partly by observations which I was permitted to make.

To the hotel Solon conducted his charges, handing them from the ’bus with a flourish that seemed to confer upon them the freedom of the city.  From shop doors and adjacent street corners the most curious among us beheld a tall, full-figured woman of majestic carriage, with a high, noble forehead and a face that seemed to register traces of some thirty-five earnest but not unprofitable years.  Even in the quick glance she bestowed up and down Washington Street before the hotel swallowed her up, her quality was to be noted by the discerning,—­the quality of a commander, of one born to prevail.  The flash of her gray-green eye was interested but unconcerned.  Complemented by the marked auburn of her plenteous hair, the eyes were masterful, advertising most legibly the temperament of a capable ruler.  The subdued, white-faced boy of twelve, with hair like his mother’s, who trotted closely at her heels was, for the moment, a negligible factor.

An hour later I entered the sanctum of the Argus, to find its owner alone before his littered table.  Upon his usually careless face was the most profoundly thoughtful look I had ever known him wear.  Open before him was that week’s Argus, but his eyes narrowed to its neat columns only at intervals.  For the most part his gaze plunged far into virgin realms of meditation.  It was only after several reminding coughs that I succeeded in recalling him from afield; and even then the deeply thoughtful look remained to estrange his face from me.

“Say, Cal, do you believe in powers?”