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.