He saw what you may see any day along the Sheepscot, and what, by the same token, you may go a weary year without seeing. He saw a deer, a proud buck, come up from the stream and follow the meadow toward where he lay. It passed the isolated alder clump, and something there gave it alarm; for Jim saw its head lift--saw then the quick leap and rush which carried the creature to cover and away.... Saw something else. Out from the alder clump burst a man, driving before him a dog. Dusk was falling, Jim could see their figures only dimly. But this much he saw. The man urged the dog after the deer, with waving arms; and the dog, ever looking backward shame-facedly, trotted slowly off upon the trail, the man still urging from behind. They slipped into the brush where the deer had gone, and Jim caught no further glimpse of them. Now, Saladine was an honest man, who loved the deer he hunted; and he was angry. But he was also a just man; and he could not be sure whom he had seen. So it was that he kept a still tongue, and waited, and through the weeks that followed he watched, patiently enough, for what should come. He meant, in that hour, to take a hand. III With a week of October left, Proutt took Reck home to Westley. Westley was not there, but Mrs. Westley marked Proutt’s lowering eye, and was frightened of the man, and told Westley so when he came. But Westley was well enough pleased to have Reck back again; and he bade her forget Proutt. Proutt had been, thus far, somewhat favored by fortune. The business of his office had taken Westley away from Fraternity for two weeks at a time, so that Proutt had had full time to do with Reck as he chose. Fraternity knew nothing of what had happened, though Jim Saladine may have guessed. There was one night at Will’s store when Jim and Proutt were near fisticuffs. Proutt had brought Dan with him to the store; and Jim, studying the surly dog, asked: “Dan ever notice a deer, Proutt?” Proutt exclaimed profanely. “No,” he said. “I was over in the Sheepscot, t’other day,” said Jim evenly. “See tracks where a dog had been after a deer.” “More like it was one of these setters,” Proutt declared, watching them all from beneath lowered lids. “They’ll kill a deer, or a sheep, give ’em a chance.” “It was hound’s tracks,” Jim persisted mildly; and something in Jim’s tone, or in Proutt’s own heart, made the trainer boil into fury, so that he strode toward Saladine. But Will Bissell came between, and the matter passed.