It was said that the death pack, phantom hounds of a bad squire,
whose gross body had been long since put to sweeter uses than any
he put it to in life--changed into the clear-eyed daisy and the ardent
pimpernel--scoured the country on dark stormy nights. Harm was for the
house past which it streamed, death for those that heard it give tongue.

This was the legend, and Hazel believed it implicitly. When she had
found Foxy half dead outside her deserted earth, she had been quite
sure that it was the death pack that had made away with Foxy's mother.
She connected it also with her own mother's death. Hounds symbolized
everything she hated, everything that was not young, wild and happy.
She identified herself with Foxy, and so with all things hunted and
snared and destroyed.

Night, shadow, loud winds, winter--these were inimical; with these came
the death pack, stealthy and untiring, following for ever the trail of
the defenceless. Sunlight, soft airs, bright colours, kindness--these
were beneficent havens to flee into. Such was the essence of her creed,
the only creed she held, and it lay darkly in her heart, never
expressed even to herself. But when she ran into the night to comfort
the little fox, she was living up to her faith as few do; when she
gathered flowers and lay in the sun, she was dwelling in a mystical
atmosphere as vivid as that of the saints; when she recoiled from
cruelty, she was trampling evil underfoot, perhaps more surely than
those great divines who destroyed one another in their zeal for their
Maker.