hat
Potts could deteriorate ten thousand dollars worth and still walk the
earth. Indeed, he believed, and uttered a few rough words to express it,
that ten dollars would be an excessive valuation even if Potts were
utterly destroyed.

Being an earnest soul, Westley had taken the Potts affair very
seriously. He made it a point to encounter the Colonel on an early day
and to address him on Main Street in tones that lacked the least
affectation of suavity or diplomatic guile. He had seen diplomacy tried
and found wretchedly wanting. He would have no more of it ever. Like the
straightaway man he was, he went to the meat of the matter.

"You squandered that hundred dollars we give you to git out of town on,"
he burst forth to Potts, breathing with an ominous difficulty.

"You just wait till you hear the worst of it," answered Potts, as he
confidingly dusted the shoulder of Westley's coat. "The worst of it is I
had over twelve dollars of my own money that I'd saved up--you know how
hard it is to save money in these little towns--well, that went, too,
_every cent of it!_"

It was admitted by witnesses competent to form an opinion that Westley's
contorted face, his troubled breathing, his manner of stepping back, and
the curious writhing of his stout arms, all encouraged a supposition
that he might be contemplating immediate violence upon the person of
Potts. At all events, this view was taken by the aggrieved and puzzled
Colonel, who fled through the Boston Cash Store and, by means of a rear
exit from that emporium, gained the office of Truman Baird, Justice of
the Peace, where he swore to a legal document which averred that "the
said Jonas R. Potts" was "in fear of immediate and great bodily harm,
which he has reasonable cause to believe will be inflicted upon him by
the said Westley Keyts."

The majesty of the law being thus invoked, Westley was put under a good
and sufficient bond to refrain from "in any manner of attacking or
molesting the said Potts, against the statutes therein made and
provided, and against the peace and dignity of the State of Illinois."

A proceeding so official somewhat dampened the fires of Mr. Keyts. He
was a citizen, law-abiding by intention, with a patriot's esteem for
government. It had merely not occurred to him that the summary
extinction of Potts could be a performance at all incompatible with the
peace and dignity of the great commonwealth to which he was at heart
loyal. Being convinc