of some animal thrashing about in the bushes, which we
could see were violently agitated.

"'We've started a deer,' I said. 'I wish we had brought a rifle.'

"Morgan, who had stopped and was intently watching the agitated
_chaparral_, said nothing, but had cocked both barrels of his gun and
was holding it in readiness to aim. I thought him a trifle excited,
which surprised me, for he had a reputation for exceptional coolness,
even in moments of sudden and imminent peril.

"'O, come,' I said. 'You are not going to fill up a deer with
quail-shot, are you?'

"Still he did not reply; but catching a sight of his face as he turned
it slightly toward me I was struck by the intensity of his look. Then I
understood that we had serious business in hand and my first conjecture
was that we had 'jumped' a grizzly. I advanced to Morgan's side, cocking
my piece as I moved.

"The bushes were now quiet and the sounds had ceased, but Morgan was as
attentive to the place as before.

"'What is it? What the devil is it?' I asked.

"'That Damned Thing!' he replied, without turning his head. His voice
was husky and unnatural. He trembled visibly.

"I was about to speak further, when I observed the wild oats near the
place of the disturbance moving in the most inexplicable way. I can
hardly describe it. It seemed as if stirred by a streak of wind, which
not only bent it, but pressed it down--crushed it so that it did not
rise; and this movement was slowly prolonging itself directly toward us.

"Nothing that I had ever seen had affected me so strangely as this
unfamiliar and unaccountable phenomenon, yet I am unable to recall any
sense of fear. I remember--and tell it here because, singularly enough,
I recollected it then--that once in looking carelessly out of an open
window I momentarily mistook a small tree close at hand for one of a
group of larger trees at a little distance away. It looked the same size
as the others, but being more distinctly and sharply defined in mass and
detail seemed out of harmony with them. It was a mere falsification of
the law of aerial perspective, but it startled, almost terrified me. We
so rely upon the orderly operation of familiar natural laws that any
seeming suspension of them is noted as a menace to our safety, a warning
of unthinkable calamity. So now the apparently causeless movement of the
herbage and the slow, undeviating approach of the line of disturbances
were distinctly disquieting. My c