The passer-by was only a man, after all, such a creature as usually did not take the trouble to hunt chipmunks. Still he felt afraid, and it is extremely doubtful that the small-sized, always addled brain in his miniature skull could tell him why. The truth was that in that stealing figure there was something terribly suggestive of the beasts of prey themselves, creatures that—more than often—did devote unwelcome attentions to chipmunks. The man crept through the forest with the same caution. His eyes were strange and glowing like those of the lynx as it climbs through the branches. And over him—an aura too dim and obscure for the blunt senses of human beings—hung an essence with which the wilderness creatures are only too familiar: that ancient lust and fever that comes to Broken Fang when he strikes down his prey. He was shivering all over; and it was to be remembered that the wolf—in certain dread moments at the end of the chase—shivered the same way. One would have been given cause to wonder what stress, what dreadful events had occurred beyond the edge of the meadow that had caused this queer inebriation. But as strong drink dies in the body, the fever seemed to fall away from him as he made turn after turn in the trail. He stooped now, rather than crouched, his footfall had a fumbling, heavy, dragging quality that was not at all like the stealth it had possessed at first. The surface lights passed from his dark eyes, leaving them somewhat languorous and lifeless. The lines of his face were of inordinate fatigue; he no longer trembled in excitement, and for all the heat of the July night he felt cold. José Mertos was no stranger to the blood-madness. It had been upon him plenty of times in his own land, and he had shivered and exulted with it beneath far southern stars. Yet it never grew old to him. Its rapture seemed ever greater. But unfortunately, when it died, it left disquieting pictures in his brain. They always took the fine edge from his satisfaction after a particularly skilful affair such as this had been. He was a tried hand in such work, innured to wickedness, yet he still retained the same troublesome tendency toward after-images that had spoiled his sleep, one night and another, in the past.