It had been a stormy evening for Harshaw. He was, however, well accustomed to contention. It was not this that irked him; he writhed under the sense of disadvantage, of being brought in propinquity to defeat. He was a man not susceptible of the finer emotions of success, of gratulation because of the thing attained rather than the plaudits of attainment. His sensibility to achievement was manifested in a certain sordid inversion of values. He made popularity, position, social opportunity, political preferment, the end of mental supremacy, rather than its humble incident. And thus it was that, rough as he was, courageous, obstinate, full of rugged nodules of traits, hard, strong, but limited, there was no solid substratum of absolute sincere purpose in his nature, no bed-rock impervious to all infiltration of temptation, all extraneous influence; whatever he might build would fail at the foundation. His world had changed to him in some sort during the short hours since the darkness had fallen. He strode into the hotel feeling a different man. He found it necessary to assert himself. All the fight in him was on the alert. He cared little for Kinsard or for the scene itself in the House, but it was peculiarly obnoxious to him that it should have been another chance allusion to the man he hated which precipitated the collision. He revolted from the fact that it might seem a reiteration of the lesson received earlier in the evening. He knew that many commented upon the coincidence, and that doubtless he was recommended to leave Gwinnan alone. Now submission was not what he was prepared to offer. He preferred that it should seem a persistent attack on Gwinnan. Once more he returned to the charge. He was serious, lowering, formidable. He did not go at once to his room, as the lateness of the hour might have impelled him. He was quick to observe the faces of the legislators about: some were merely curious; others held a half-cloaked triumph; and still others an open gloating satisfaction. It was with a manner which was a distinct replication to all three manifestations that he lounged about the reading-room with a striding gait, his hat on the back of his head, his hands in his pockets, and his cigar fast between his teeth. He finally threw himself into a chair by the table before the open fire in the inner room, and said in a meditative undertone to a gentleman with whom he had sufficient association to make it seem a confidence to a friend, “I reckon I’ll have to write to Judge Gwinnan.” The others heard it, however, and it was to several that he read the letter when it was completed. They thought it very bold; to show that it was not empty bluster, but written with all the sincerity of immediate intention, he rang for a bell-boy, and dispatched it in their presence to Gwinnan’s room.