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 that blazed in her pale face, made scathing answer.

“You shan’t kill the poor brute like a rat in a trap.  He deserves better than that.  You had your chance of killing in the open, and you failed.  It isn’t sport to kill in the dark.”

“We’ll soon have ’im out,” said the huntsman grimly.

She shook her head.  Her hands, in the ripped gloves, were clenched and quivering.

The huntsman slashed and swore at one of the hounds to relieve his feelings, and looked for inspiration to the growing crowd of riders.