He stood close behind her when the gate was opened, watching the hounds narrowly, and now and again uttering an imperative, “Down, Victor!  Get down, Marquis!” when one or other of the great beasts playfully leapt up against Nan’s side, pawing at her in friendly fashion.  Meanwhile Denman had quietly disappeared, and when he returned he carried a long-lashed hunting-crop in his hand.

Nan was smoothing first one tan head, then another, receiving eager caresses from rough, pink tongues in return, and insensibly she had moved step by step further into the yard to reach this or that hound as it caught her attention.

“Come back!” called Trenby hastily.  “Don’t go any further.”

Perhaps the wind carried his voice away from her, or perhaps she was so preoccupied with the hounds that the meaning of his words hardly penetrated her mind.  Whichever it may have been, with a low cry of, “Oh, you beauty!” she stepped quickly towards Vengeance, one of the best hounds in the pack, a fierce-looking beast with a handsome head and sullen month, who had been standing apart, showing no disposition to join the clamorous, slobbering throng at the gate.

His hackles rose at Nan’s sudden movement towards him, and as she stretched out her hand to stroke him the sulky head lifted with a thunderous growl.  As though at a given signal the whole pack seemed to gather round her.

Simultaneously Vengeance leaped, and Nan was only conscious of the ripping of her garments, the sudden pressure of hot bodies round her, and of a blurred sound of hounds baying, the vicious cracking of a whip, and the voices of men shouting.

She sank almost to her knees, instinctively shielding her head and throat with her arms, borne to the ground by the force of the great padded feet which had struck her.  Open jaws, red like blood, and gleaming ivory fangs fenced her round.  Instantaneously there flashed through her mind the recollection of something she had once been told—­that if one hound turns on you, the whole pack will turn with him—­like wolves.

This was death, then—­death by those worrying, white-fanged mouths—­the tearing of soft, warm flesh from her living limbs and afterwards the crushing of her bones between those powerful jaws.

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.