right--because it is our judgment. Therefore, unconsciously or
consciously, every subsequent impression is bent to bolster up and
sustain that judgment. We hate to be wrong. We hate to admit, even to
ourselves, that we are wrong.

Strange, isn't it? How often we are right (permit the smile) in our
estimate of people?

When Chloe Elliston turned to face MacNair among the stumps of the
sunlit clearing, her opinion of the man had already been formed. He
was Brute MacNair, one to be hated, despised. To be fought, conquered,
and driven out of the North--for the good of the North. His influence
was a malignant ulcer--a cancerous plague-spot, whose evil tentacles,
reaching hidden and unseen, would slowly but surely fasten themselves
upon the civilization of the North--sap its vitality--poison its blood.

In the flash of her first glance the girl's eyes took in every
particular and detail of him. She noted the huge frame, broad, yet
lean with the gaunt leanness of health, and endurance, and physical
strength. The sinew-corded, bronzed hands that clenched slowly as his
glance rested for a moment upon the face of Lapierre. The
weather-tanned neck that rose, columnlike, from the open shirt-throat.
The well-poised head. The prominent, high-bridged nose. The lantern
jaw, whose rugged outline was but half-concealed by the roughly trimmed
beard of inky blackness. And, the most dominant feature of all, the
compelling magnetism of the steel-grey eyes of him--eyes, deep-set
beneath heavy black brows that curved and met--eyes that stabbed, and
bored, and probed, as if to penetrate to the ultimate motive. Hard
eyes they were, whose directness of gaze spoke at once fearlessness and
intolerance of opposition; spoke, also, of combat, rather than