His face had grown to be the most determined I have ever seen. There was no obstinacy in it--he wasn't a bull-dog--only set determination. No one could have failed to read in it an immensely powerful will. In a curious way he seemed “on edge” all the time. His nostrils were always distended, the muscles of his lean jaw were never lax, but continually at tension, thrusting the chin forward with his teeth hard together. His eyebrows were contracted, I think, even in his sleep, and he looked at everything with a sort of quick, fierce, appearance of scrutiny, though at that time I imagined that he saw very little. He had a loud, rich voice, his pronunciation was clipped to a deadly distinctness; he was so straight and his head so high in the air that he seemed almost to tilt back. With his tall figure and black hair, he was a boy who would have attracted attention, as they say, in any crowd, so that he might have been taken for a young actor. His best friend, a kind of Man Friday to him, was another young fellow from Greenville, whose name was Joe Lane. I liked Joe. I'd known him? since he was a boy. He was lazy and pleasant-looking, with reddish hair and a drawling, low voice. He had a humorous, sensible expression, though he was dissipated, I'd heard, but very gentle in his manners. I had a talk with him under the trees of the college campus in the moonlight, Commencement night. I can see the boy lying there now, sprawling on the grass with a cigar in his mouth. “Hector's done well,” I said. “Oh, Lord, yes!” Joe answered. “He always will. He's going 'way up in the world.” “What makes you think so?” “Because he's so sure of it. It only needs a little luck to make him a great man. In fact, he already is a great man.” “You mean you think he has a great mind?” “Why, no, sir; but I think he has a purpose so big and so set, that it might be called great, and it will make him great.” “What purpose?” Joe answered quietly but very slowly, pulling at his cigar after each syllable: “Hec--tor--J. Ran--som!” “I declare,” I put in, “I thought you were his friend!” “So I am,” the young fellow returned. “Friend, admirer, and doer-in-ordinary to Hector J. Ransom, that's my quality. I've done errands and odd jobs for him all my life. Most people who meet him do; though it might be hard to say why. I haven't hitched my wagon to a star; nobody'll get to do that, because this star isn't going to take anything to the zenith but itself.” “Going to the zenith, is he?” “Surely.” “You mean,” said I, “that he's going to make a fine lawyer?” “Oh, no, I think not. He might have been called one in the last generation, but, as I understand it, nowadays a lawyer has to work out business propositions more than oratory.” “And you think Hector has only his oratory?”