ar.

She paused therefore, and in the pause there came to her ears a swelling
tumult that arose from the ridge of an eminence a couple of fields away.
Right well Avery knew that sound. In the far-off days of her early
girlhood it had quickened her pulses many a time. It was enough even now
to set every nerve throbbing with a tense excitement.

She turned her face once more to the open, and as she did so she heard
again in the hut behind her that agonized sound, half-cough, half-whine,
of an animal exhausted and in the extremity of mortal fear.

It was enough for Avery. She grasped the situation on the instant, and
on the instant she acted. She felt as if a helpless and tortured being
had cried to her for deliverance, and all that was great in her
responded to the cry.

She seized the crazy shutter that was propped against the wall, put forth
her strength, and lifted it out into the open. It was no easy matter to
set it securely against the low doorway. She wondered afterwards how she
did it; at the time she tore her gloves to ribbons with the exertion, but
yet was scarcely aware of making any.

When the pack swept across the grass in a single yelling, heaving mass,
she was ready. She leaned against the improvised door with arms
outstretched and resolutely faced the swarming, piebald multitude.

In a moment the hounds were upon her. She was waist-deep in them. They
leapt almost to her shoulders in their madness, smothering her with mud
and slobber. For a second or two the red eyes and gaping jaws made even
Avery's brave heart quail. But she stood her ground, ordering them back
with breathless insistence. They must have thought her a maniac, she
reflected afterwards. At the time she fully expected to be torn in
pieces, and was actually surprised when they suddenly parted and swept
round the hut, encircling it with deep-mouthed baying.

The huntsman, arriving on the scene, found her white-faced but still
determined, still firmly propping the shutter in place with the weight of
her body. He called the hounds to order with hoarse oaths and furious
crackings of the whip, and as he did so the rest of the field began to
arrive, a laughing, trampling crowd of sportsmen who dropped into
staring, astounded silence as they reached the scene.

And then the huntsman addressed Avery with sardonic affability.

"P'r'aps now, miss, you'd be good enough to step aside and let the 'ounds
attend to business."

But Avery, with eyes