nsidered that the company
would have given up at least five hundred more to avoid being sued for
the death of a man who had been able to evoke those letters; but I did
not say so, for the case was Truman's and eight hundred dollars were
many. Westley Keyts thought they were, indeed, a great many, and
outrageously excessive as a cold money valuation of Potts. "She only got
eight hundred dollars, but there's them that thinks she skinned the
company at _that!_" said Westley.

But there was no disposition to begrudge the widow a single dollar of
this modest sum. A jury of Little Arcadians would have multiplied it
tenfold without a blush; for, while that little hoard endured, any
citizen, however public spirited, could flavor with a certain grace his
refusal to subscribe for a book.

To Solon Denney the thing came as a deep and divine relief. In the
satisfaction induced by it, he penned an obituary of Potts in which he
employed the phrase "grim messenger of death" very cleverly indeed. For
matters had been going from bad to worse. Murmurs at the demands of Mrs.
Potts--likened by Asa Bundy to a daughter of the horse leech--had become
passionately loud as our masses toiled expensively up that Potts-defined
path of enlightenment. The old sneer at Solon's Boss-ship was again to
be observed on every hand, that attitude of doubting ridicule,
half-playful, half-contemptuous, which your public man finds more
dangerous to his influence than downright hostility would be.

But the murmurs were again stilled, and Solon might breathe the peace of
a golden age when as yet no Potts, male or female, had come unto us.

It was not felt at all that Solon's genius for the discretion of public
affairs had availed him in this latest crisis. But the benefit was
substantial, none the less, and the columns of the _Argus_ were again
buoyant as of yore. It was at this time, I remember, that the _Argus_
first spoke of our town as "a gem at beauty's throat," and, touching the
rare enterprise of our citizens, declared that, "If you put a Slocum
County man astride a streak of lightning, he'd call for a pair of
spurs."

For myself, I frankly mourned Potts. For I saw now that he had been
truly and finely of that Greek spirit--one accepting gifts from the gods
with a joyous young faith in their continuance. I felt that he had
divined more of the lesson of Greek art than his one-time love could
write down in papers unending. I should not have wished him