That Proutt had some battle with himself cannot be denied. No man sets out to destroy a soul without first overcoming the scruples which bind him; and there were scruples in Proutt. There must have been. He loved dogs, loved fine dogs, and Reck was fine. Yet the destruction of Reck’s honor and reputation and life--these were the ends which Proutt set himself to bring about--at what pain to his own heart no man may fully guess. It can only be known that in the end his hatred outweighed all else--that he threw himself into the thing he meant to do. * * * * * Reck, as has been shown, needed no training for his appointed work. Yet Proutt kept him, labored with him daily, for close to four long weeks, as all Fraternity men knew. None saw that training. It was known that Proutt took Reck far over the Sheepscot Ridge, where farms were all deserted, and no man was like to come upon him. But he had done that with dogs before, for woodcock lay thick in Sheepscot Valley. Once or twice men heard the barking of a dog in that valley; and there was a measure of pain in the notes. And three times men met Proutt driving homeward, with Reck lying weary and subdued upon the floor of the buggy, scarce fit to lift his head. It was remarked that Proutt was more dour and morose than ever; and Lee Motley thought the man was aging.... * * * * * One man only, and that man Jim Saladine, caught some inkling of that which was afoot. Jim was a deer hunter; and toward mid-October, with a shotgun under his arm for luck’s sake, but never a buckshot in his cartridge pocket, he went one day into the Sheepscot Valley to search out the land. Deer lay in the swamps there; and Jim sought to locate them against the coming season. He moved slowly and quietly, as his custom was; ears and eyes open. And he saw many things which another man would never have seen. Two things he saw which had significance. Once, in a muddy patch along the Sheepscot’s brim, he came upon a deer’s track; and other tracks beside it. A man’s track, and a dog’s. Jim studied these tracks. They were sadly muddled; and he could make little of them. But he was sure of this much--that man and dog had been attentive to the tracks of the deer. And this stayed in Jim’s mind, because no dog in Fraternity has any business with the track of a deer, and no man may justly set a dog upon such track. Later that day Jim was to find some explanation for what he had seen. Where Fuller’s brook comes into the Sheepscot, there lies an open meadow half a mile long, and half as broad; and near the lower end of the meadow half a dozen alders group about a lone tree in the open. Deer and moose, coming up the Sheepscot Valley, are like to cross the stream below and then traverse this meadow; and Jim Saladine stopped under cover at the meadow’s head--it was near dusk--to see what he should see.