Page:Wilson - The Boss of Little Arcady (1905).djvu/83

 pursue them, but they had disappeared from sight in the vicinity of Crowder & Fancett's lumber yard. Things have come to a pretty pass, we must say, if such a dastardly outrage as this should be allowed to go unpunished. Now that Colonel Potts has brought suit against the city we suppose the council will have that mill-race covered. We have repeatedly warned them about this. We wonder if they ever heard a well-known saying about "locking the stable door after horse is stolen," etc.

The card of Colonel Potts, printed elsewhere in this issue, is a sufficient refutation of the malicious gossip that has been handed back and forth lately that he had planned to leave Little Arcady. It looks now like certain busybodies in this community had overstepped themselves and been hoisted up by their own petard. The Colonel is a fine man for County Judge, and we bespeak for him the suffrages of every voter who wants an honest judiciary.

Westley Keyts, reading this, wanted to know what a petard was. Inquiry disclosed that he hoped it might be something that could be used upon Potts to the advantage of almost every one concerned. But in the minds of others of us an agonized suspicion now took form. Had the letters been upon Potts when he went down? Had they been saved? Were they legible? And would he use them?

It was decided that Solon Denney should try to illuminate this point before taking the candidacy of Potts seriously. In the next issue of the Argus, therefore, was this paragraph, meant to be provocative:—