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. One of them, the M.F.H., Colonel Rose of Wardenhurst, pushed his horse forward. He raised his hat with extreme courtliness. "Madam," he said, "while appreciating your courage, allow me to point out that that fox is now the legal property of the Hunt, and you have no right whatever to deprive us of it." His daughter Ina, a slim girl of twenty, was at his elbow. She jogged it impatiently. "He'll remain our property whether we kill or not, Dad. Let him live to run again!" "What?" cried a voice in the rear. "Let a woman interfere? Great Heavens above, Barchard! Have you gone mad?" Barchard the huntsman glanced round uneasily as an old man on a powerful white horse forced his way to the front. His grey eyes glowered down at Avery as though he would slay her. The trampling hoofs came within a yard of her. But if he thought to make her desert her post by that means, he was mistaken. She stood there, actually waiting to be hustled by the fretting animal, and yielding not an inch. "Stand aside!" thundered Sir Beverley. "Confound you! Stand aside!" But Avery never stirred. She faced him panting but unflinching. The foam of his hunter splashed her, the mud from the stamping hoofs struck upwards on her face; but still she stood to defend the defenceless thing behind her.