Page:Melville Davisson Post--The Man of Last Resort.djvu/20

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
xii
Preface.

His eyes were restless, inky black, and not over-large. The nose was big and muscular and bowed. The eyebrows were black and heavy, almost bushy. There were heavy furrows, running from the nose downward and outward to the corners of the mouth. The mouth was straight, and the jaw was heavy and square.

"Looking at the face of Randolph Mason from above, the expression in repose was crafty and cynical; viewed from below upward, it was savage and vindictive, almost brutal; while from the front, if looked squarely in the face, the stranger was fascinated by the animation of the man, and at once concluded that his expression was at the same time sneering and fearless. He was evidently of Southern extraction and a man of unusual power."

This counsellor, keen, powerful, and yet devoid of any sense of moral obligation, is possessed of this one idea—that the difficulties of men are problems and that he can solve them; that the law, being of human origin, can be evaded; that its servants, being but men like the others, may be balked, and thwarted