The attitude of indifference had gone, the air of lassitude with it.

Here was a man quietly exacting the hardest service which it was in his power to exact, claiming it as a right, and yet making it clear by some subtle sympathy that he understood very well all that the service would cost to the man who served.
"I am to hinder the making of that Road ?" cried Linforth.
"You are to do more.

You are to prevent it." "I have lived so that it should be made." "So you have told me," said Ralston quietly, and Dick was silent.

With each quiet sentence Ralston had become more and more the dominating figure.

He was so certain, so assured.