Then Dan whispered. Ever so soft a sound, but yet distinct in the silence. "There's something living in that thicket." Then Lennox heard it too. As they stood still, the sound became ever clearer and more pronounced. Some living creature was advancing toward them; and twigs were cracking beneath its feet. The sounds were rather subdued, and yet, as the animal approached, both of them instinctively knew that they were extremely loud for the usual footsteps of any of the wild creatures. "What is it?" Dan asked quietly. Lennox was so intrigued by the sounds that he was not even observant of the peculiar, subdued quality in Dan's voice. Otherwise, he would have wondered at it. "I'm free to confess I don't know," he said. "It's booming right towards us, like most animals don't care to do. Of course it may be a human being. You must watch out for that." They waited. The sound ended. They stood straining for a long moment without speech. "That was the dumdest thing!" Lennox went on. "Of course it might have been a bear--you never know what they're going to do. It might have got sight of us and turned off. But I can't believe that it was just a deer--" But then his words chopped squarely off in his throat. The plodding advance commenced again. And the next instant a gray form revealed itself at the edge of the thicket. It was Graycoat, half-blind with his madness, and desperate in his agony. There was no more deadly thing in all the hills than he. Even the bite of a rattlesnake would have been welcomed beside his. He stood a long instant, and all his instincts and reflexes that would have ordinarily made him flee in abject terror were thwarted and twisted by the fever of his madness. He stared a moment at the two figures, and his red eyes could not interpret them. They were simply foes, for it was true that when this racking agony was upon him, even lifeless trees seemed foes sometimes. He seemed eerie and unreal as he gazed at them out of his burning eyes; and the white foam gathered at his fangs. And then, wholly without warning, he charged down at them. He came with unbelievable speed. The elder Lennox cried once in warning and cursed himself for venturing forth on the ridge without a gun. He was fully twenty feet distant from Dan; yet he saw in an instant his only course. This was no time to trust their lives to the marksmanship of an amateur. He sprang towards Dan, intending to wrench the weapon from his hand.