“If we are to perpetrate this outrage at all,” insisted Bundy, 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.