I tried to have nothing to do with him, but he got me by the arm, and others were around me.  “Yein, yein, yein!” they shouted into my ear; and as I tried to make my way through, they began to hustle me.  “I’ll shove your face in, you damned Hun!”—­a continual string of such abuse; and I had been in the service, and seen fighting!

I never tried harder to avoid trouble; I wanted to get away, but that big fellow stuck his feet between mine and tripped me, he lunged and shoved me into the gutter, and so, of course, I made to hit him.  But they had me helpless; I had no more than clenched my fist and drawn back my arm, when I received a violent blow on the side of my jaw.  I never knew what hit me, a fist or a weapon.  I only felt the crash, and a sensation of reeling, and a series of blows and kicks like a storm about me.

I ask you to believe that I did not run away in the Argonne.  I did my job, and got my wound, and my honorable record.  But there I had a fighting chance, and here I had none; and maybe I was dazed, and it was the instinctive reaction of my tormented body—­anyhow, I ran.  I staggered along, with the blows and kicks to keep me moving.  And then I saw half a dozen broad steps, and a big open doorway; I fled that way, and found myself in a dark, cool place, reeling like a drunken man, but no longer beaten, and apparently no longer pursued.  I was falling, and there was something nearby, and I caught at it, and sank down upon a sort of wooden bench.

IV

I had run into St. Bartholomew’s Church; and when I came to—­I fear I cut a pitiful figure, but I have to tell the truth—­I was crying.  I don’t think the pain of my head and face had anything to do with it, I think it was rage and humiliation; my sense of outrage, that I, who had helped to win a war, should have been made to run from a gang of cowardly rowdies.  Anyhow, here I was, sunk down in a pew of the church, sobbing as if my heart was broken.

At last I raised my head, and holding on to the pew in front, looked about me.  The church was apparently deserted.  There were dark vistas; and directly in front of me a gleaming altar, and high over it a stained glass window, with the afternoon sun shining through.  You know, of course, the sort of figures they have in those windows; a man in long robes, white, with purple and gold; with a brown beard, and a gentle, sad face, and a halo of light about the head.  I was staring at the figure, and at the same time choking with rage and pain, but clenching my hands, and making up my mind to go out and follow those brutes, and get that big one alone and pound his face to a jelly.  And here begins the strange part of my adventure; suddenly that shining figure stretched out its two arms to me, as if imploring me not to think those vengeful thoughts!