hat 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 thing was ominous. Yet, might it not merely
denote that Potts wished to enter upon his new life well barbered? The
bulging bag supported this possibility, and yet I was ill at ease.

Reaching my office, I sought to engage myself with the papers of an
approaching suit, but it was impossible to ignore the darkling cloud of
disaster which impended. I returned to the street anxiously.

On my way to the City Hotel, where I had resolved to await like a man
what calamity there might be, I again passed the barber-shop.

Harpin Cust now leaned, gracefully attentive, on the back of the empty
chair, absently swishing his little whisk broom. Before him was planted
Potts, his left foot advanced, his head thrown back, reading to Harpin
from a spread page of the _Argus_. I divined