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.
