His obstinate under lip protruded further and further with rare recessions; his heavy head was like the lowered head of a bull.

Undaunted, inexorable, slow to the verge of stupidity at times, at times swift as a startled tiger, this new, amazing personality steadily developing, looming higher, heavier, athwart the financial horizon--in stature holding his own among giants, then growing, gradually, inch by inch, dominated his surrounding level sky line.
The youth in him was the tragedy to the old; the sudden silence of the man the danger to the secretive.

Harrington was already an old man; Quarrier's own weapon had always been secrecy; but the silence of Plank confused him, for he had never learned to parry well another's use of his own weapon.

The left-handed swordsman dreads to cross with a man who fights with the left hand.

And Harrington, hoary, seamed, scarred, maimed in onslaughts of long forgotten battles, looked long and hard upon this weird of his own dead youth which now rose towering to confront him, menacing him with the armed point of the same shield behind which he himself had so long found shelter--the Law! The closing of the courts enforced armed truces along certain lines of Plank's battle front; the adjournment of the legislature emptied Albany.
Once it was rumoured that Plank had passed an entire morning with the Governor of the greatest State in the Union and that the conference was to be repeated.