He was low-toned, easy of manner, with a flawless aplomb.

As he served me those mornings in late summer, wearing a dress-coat of broadcloth, a choice relic of his splendid past, it was not difficult to see that he had been the associate of gentlemen.
As I ate of his cooking on a fair Sunday, I marvelled gratefully at the slender thread of chance that had drawn him to be my stay.

Alone in that little house, with no one to make it a home for me, Clem was the barrier between me and the fare of the City Hotel.

Apparently without suggestion from me he had taken me for his own to tend and watch over.

And the marvel was assuredly not diminished by the circumstance that I was beholden to Potts for this black comfort.
Events were in train which were to intensify a thousand fold my amazement at the seeming inconsequence 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 had never made a wilder, 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 dog-like devotion by subsequent valor upon other fields.