The Price He Paid — page 32: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

CARRYING OUT ORDERS, 23 reproach will be spared me, I know, come what may.” He rose, thereby giving the signal for the break- ing up of the conference. Baron Arno von Raven, at six or seven and forty, might have been taken as atype of mature and vigorous manhood. He was still in the plenitude of his strength, physical and intellectual, and still, as was generally admitted, of a most imposing presence. There was an air of command in the very carriage of his tall and power- ful form. His marked features, on which haughti- ness and an indomitable energy were plainly writ- ten, could not now be styled handsome—they had never been so—but they were striking and charac- teristic in every line. The thick dark hair was un- tinged with gray, except on the temples, where some silver threads denoted that life’s meridian was passed. The dark eyes, so full of fire, seemed, how- ever, to tell another tale. They spoke of life in all its pristine force and vigor; but there was a stern, uncompromising look in them, and when they rested on any given object, they seemed literally to trans- fix it. His bearing was one of quiet dignity blended with proud reserve. Nothing in him betrayed a trace of the parvenu. The man looked as though from his earliest years, he had had the habit of command. “This is not a question of myself,” he said. “So long as abuse and menaces were conveyed to me in anonymous letters, I simply consigned them to the waste-paper basket, and thought no more of them; but if bills containing threatening and seditious lan- guage are, openly and before the eyes of all the: world, to be pasted up on the walls of the govern- ment-house, if attempts are to be made to insult me when I drive out, while the more respectable citi- zens demonstratively refrain from interfering, it becomes my duty to take some serious steps in the matter. I hold the highest post in this province. If L suffer these misdemeanors, if I tolerate these of- fenses directed against my person, I thereby endan- ger the authority of the Government, which it is my office to represent, and which I am bound to uphold EOMmichboo <S (E(@)