Page:Wilson - The Boss of Little Arcady (1905).djvu/90

 quence of really vital facts in this big life-plot of which we are the puppets—events so incredible that to dwell upon their relation to the minor accident of a mere Potts were to incur confusion and downright madness.

Apparently fate never made a wilder, a more purposeless cast than when it brought Clem to Little Arcady with Potts.

True, the circumstance enabled Potts for a time to refer to his "body-servant," and to regale the chair-tilted loungers along the City Hotel front with a tale of picking the fellow up on a Southern battle-field, and of winning his doglike devotion by subsequent valor upon other fields. "It was pathetic, and comical, too, gentlemen, to hear that nigger beg me on his bended knees to take better care of myself and not insist upon getting to the front of every charge. 'Stay back and let some of the others do a little fighting,' he would say, with tears rolling down his black cheeks. And I admit I was rash, but—"

Clem, not long after their arrival, confided to such of us as seemed worthy the less romantic tale that he had found the Colonel drunk on the streets of Cincinnati. He had gone there to seek a fortune for his "folks" and had found the Colonel instead; found him under circumstances which were typical of the Colonel's periods of relaxation.

"Yes, seh, anybody could 'a' had that man when Ah found him," averred Clem;" anybody could 'a' had him fo' th' askin'. A p'liceman offaseh neahly