practised on the law--as Simon Mehronay used to say of Handy--and for
twenty years carried an advertisement in Eastern farm journals
proclaiming that his specialty was Kansas collections. He never took as
a fee less than ninety-five per cent. of the amount he collected. That
was the advantage which he had as a lawyer, which advantage inspired
Colonel Alphabetical Morrison to proclaim that a lawyer's diploma is
nothing but a license to steal; upon hearing which Charley Hedrick sent
back to the Colonel the retort that it would take two legal diplomas
working day and night to keep up with the Colonel's more or less honest
endeavours.

Now Ab Handy was a lean coyote, who was forever licking his bruises, and
some ten years later he tried to run for the school board solely to get
the Colonel's daughters dismissed as school-teachers. It was his boast
that he never forgot a foe; and for twenty years after Hedrick saved
Handy from going to jail for robbing a cattleman of a thousand dollars
in "Red" Martin's gambling-room, the only good thing the town knew of
Handy was that he never forgot a friend.

During that twenty years whenever, to further his ends in a primary or
in an election, Charley Hedrick needed the votes of the rough element
that gathered about our little town, Abner Handy, card-sharper and
jack-leg lawyer, would go forth into the byways and alleys and gather
them in. For this service, when Hedrick carried the county--which was
about four times out of five--Handy was rewarded by being put on the
delegation to the State convention. Thus he made his beginning in State
politics. The second time that he attended a State convention Handy
swelled up in his Sunday clothes, and by reason of his slight
acquaintance with the manipulators of State politics, began to patronise
the other members of our delegation--good, honest men, whose contempt
for him at home was unspeakable; but when they huddled like sheep in the
strange crowd at the convention they often accepted Handy as a guide in
important matters. In talking with the home delegation Handy very soon
began speaking of the convention leaders familiarly as "Jim" and "Dick"
and "Tawm" and "Bill," and sometimes Handy brought one of these
dignitaries to the rooms of our delegation and introduced him to our
people with a grand flourish. Every time the legislature met, Ab Handy
was a clerk in it, and, if he was a clerk of an important committee
like the railroad committee or