She struck out, struggling gamely to her feet, and visioned Denman cursing and slashing at the hounds as he drove them off. But Vengeance, the untamed, heedless of the lash which scored his back a dozen times, caught at her ankle and she pitched head foremost into the stream of hot-breathed mouths and struggling bodies. She felt a huge weight fling itself upon her--Vengeance, springing again at his prey--and even as she waited for the agony of piercing fangs plunged into her flesh, Trenby's voice roared in her ears as he caught the big, powerful brute by its throat and by sheer, immense physical strength dragged the hound off her. Meanwhile the second whip had rushed out from his cottage to render assistance and the whistling of the long-lashed hunting-crops drove through the air, gradually forcing the yelping hounds into submission. In the midst of the shouting and commotion Nan felt herself lifted up by Roger as easily as though she were a baby, and at the same moment the whirling lash of one of the men's hunting-crops cut her across the throat and bosom. The red-hot agony of it was unbearable, and as Trenby bore her out of the yard he felt her body grow suddenly limp in his arms and, glancing down, saw that she had lost consciousness. When Nan came to herself again it was to find she was lying on a hard little horse-hair sofa, and the first object upon which her eyes rested was a nightmare arrangement of wax flowers, carefully preserved from risk of damage by a glass shade. She was feeling stiff and sore, and the strangeness of her surroundings bewildered her--the sofa upholstered in slippery American cloth and hard as a board to her aching limbs, the waxen atrocity beneath its glass shade standing on a rickety table at the foot of the couch, the smallness of the room in which she found herself. "Where am I?" she asked in a weak voice that was hardly more than a whisper. Someone--a woman--said quickly: "Ah, she's coming round!" and bustled, out of the room. Then came Roger's voice: "You're all right, Nan--all right." And she felt his big hands close round her two slender ones reassuringly. "Don't be frightened." She raised her head to find Roger kneeling beside the sofa on which she lay. "I'm not frightened," she said. "Only--what's happened? . . . Oh, I remember! I was in the yard with the hounds. Did one of them bite me?" "Yes, Vengeance just caught your ankle. But we've bathed it thoroughly--luckily he's only torn the skin a bit--and now I'm going to bind it up for you. Mrs. Denman's just gone to fetch some stuff for me to bind it with. You'll be quite all right again to-morrow." With some difficulty Nan raised herself to a sitting position and immediately caught sight of a bowl on the ground filled with an ominous-looking reddish-coloured liquid. "Good gracious! Has my foot been bleeding like that?" she asked, going rather white.