Delilah of the Snows by Harold Bindloss

It was as hot as it can be now and then during the fierce brief summer of the North, and the perspiration rose in beads on the Crown Recorder's face as he stood on the rude verandah of his log-built dwelling looking down at the tents and shanties which showed here and there amidst the pines. He was a little man with a quiet and almost expressionless face, and attired, although he lived far remote from civilization in the wilderness, with a fastidious neatness which with the erectness of his carriage furnished a hint as to his character. There was, however, nothing that any one could have termed finicking about him.

He was precise, formal, and unemotional, a man of fixed opinions, as little to be moved by argument as by any attempt at compulsion, for Recorder Eshelby was one of the Insular Englishmen who, when entrusted with authority on the outskirts of the Empire, are equally capable of adding to their nation's credit or involving it in difficulties by their soulless and undeviating regard for its law. There are a good many of them, and, while occasionally respected, they are, as a rule, not greatly loved in any of England's dependencies.