speech became sharp and nervous, so did his mental processes. In
the swift rush of the game he found less and less time to spend
on being merely good-natured. The change marked his face itself.

The lines grew sterner. Less often appeared the playful curl of
his lips, the smile in the wrinkling corners of his eyes. The
eyes themselves, black and flashing, like an Indian's, betrayed
glints of cruelty and brutal consciousness of power. His
tremendous vitality remained, and radiated from all his being,
but it was vitality under the new aspect of the man-trampling
man-conqueror. His battles with elemental nature had been, in a
way, impersonal; his present battles were wholly with the males
of his species, and the hardships of the trail, the river, and
the frost marred him far less than the bitter keenness of the
struggle with his fellows.

He still had recrudescence of geniality, but they were largely
periodical and forced, and they were usually due to the cocktails
he took prior to meal-time. In the North, he had drunk deeply
and at irregular intervals; but now his drinking became
systematic and disciplined. It was an unconscious development,
but it was based upon physical and mental condition. The
cocktails served as an inhibition. Without reasoning or thinking
about it, the strain of the office, which was essentially due to
the daring and audacity of his ventures, required check or
cessation; and he found, through the weeks and months, that the
cocktails supplied this very thing. They constituted a stone
wall. He never drank during the morning, nor in office hours;
but the instant he left the office he proceeded to rear this wall
of alcoholic inhibition athwart his consciousness. The office