With the coming of daylight the bear changed his tactics, lying down directly under the tree, still eying his prey with his small, beady, expectant eyes, as though measuring the time that his victim could hold out.
The daylight grew stronger; slowly in the eastern horizon the red sun rose, gilding the white, glistening snow with its rosy light.
Hour by hour it climbed the blue azure height, crossed the zenith, and then slowly sank behind the western hills, heralding the oncoming of another night.
Still the brute, with almost incredible cunning, sat in the same position under the tree, watching Halloran's every move.
"God rescue me!" he cried, lifting his white face to the Heaven he had so offended.
"If I pass another night here I shall go mad—mad!"
He was famished with hunger, numb with cold, and his mouth and throat were dry with unconquerable thirst.
In those hours of suffering he thought of Lester Armstrong, and of the awful fate he had doomed him to. He realized by his own experience of a few hours what he must have endured, and a bitter groan of remorse broke from his clammy lips.
"This is Heaven's punishment," he cried. "Oh, Lester Armstrong. God has surely avenged you! If I could but atone; if it were to be done over again, I would have no hand in the atrocious crime that has dyed my hands just as surely as though I had plunged a knife into your heart!"
In his haste on leaving the cabin he had not taken time to secure his revolver; he had no weapon; he was doomed to meet the same fate that he had meted out to Lester Armstrong—starve to death slowly, hour by hour—knowing that when he was too weak to hold longer to the branch he would fall.