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.
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.
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