He had not the slightest fear that his eagerness would cost him his aim when finally his eye looked along the sights at the forms of his enemies, helpless in the marsh.  He was wholly cold about the matter now.  The lust and turmoil in his veins, remembered like a ghastly dream from that first night, returned but feebly now, if at all.  This change, this restraint had been increasingly manifest since his occupation of the cave, and it had marked, at the same time, a growing barrier between himself and Fenris.  But he could not deny but that such a development was wholly to have been expected.  Fenris was a child of the open forest aisles, never of the fireside and the hearth.  It was not that the wolf had ceased to give him his dint of faithful service, or that he loved him any the less.  But each of them had other interests,—­one his home and hearth; the other the ever-haunting, enticing call of the wildwood.  Lately Fenris had taken to wandering into the forest at night, going and coming like a ghost; and once his throat and jowls had been stained with dark blood.

“It’s getting too tame for you here, old boy, isn’t it?” Ben said to him one hushed, breathless night.  “But wait just a little while more.  It won’t be tame then.”

It was true:  the hunting party, if they had started at once, must be nearing their death valley by now.  Except for the absolute worst of traveling conditions they would have already come.  Ben felt a growing impatience:  a desire to do his work and get it over.  His pulse no longer quickened and leaped at the thought of vengeance; and the wolflike pleasure in simple killing could no longer be his.  It would merely be the soldier’s work—­a dreadful obligation to perform speedily and to forget.  Even the memory of the huddled form of his savior and friend, so silent and impotent in the dead leaves, did not stir him into madness now.

Yet he never thought of disavowing his vengeance.  It was still the main purpose of his life.  He had no theme but that:  when that work was done he could conceive of nothing further of interest on earth, nothing else worth living for.  Not for an instant had he relented:  except for that one kiss, on the occasion of her birthday, he had never broken his promise in regard to his relations with Beatrice.  His first trait was steadfastness, a trait that, curiously enough, is inherent in all living creatures who are by blood close to the wild wolf, from the German police dog to the savage husky of the North.  But he was certainly and deeply changed in these weeks in the cave.  He no longer hated these three murderous enemies of his.  The power to hate had simply died in his body.  He regarded their destruction rather as a duty he owed old Ezram, an obligation that he would die sooner than forego.