able to catch. After I had received several sledgehammer blows in the face, fallen to the ground, been kicked and stamped upon, I entirely lost consciousness. Even while I still heard his ranting, I hardly noticed any pain. I merely thought I was dying. I was fully reconciled, and prayed: "Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit!"
The next thing of which I was conscious was violent retching—due to internal injuries. In his youthful verdancy, the fiend had probably thought he had finished me. But Providence overruled, as in a number of subsequent similar assaults when I was snatched from the very jaws of death, whereas every few months I see in the papers that some less fortunate androgyne has not lived to tell the tale.
I was at first puzzled as to whether I was waking up on the earthly plane or in another world. Until I fully recovered my senses, I lay inert. Then I slowly dressed and limped away, having to rest on the curb every five hundred feet. I searched out a street fountain to bathe my bloodstained face and try to counteract the swelling and discoloration. For, most of all, I feared arousing the suspicions of my every-day circle.
I then boarded a car for home, begging my fare. In its regular hiding place in a stone wall of a neighboring park, I obtained the key to the street door of my boarding house.[1] Fortunately without encountering anybody, I mounted the several flights of stairs and secured my room-key from its hiding place. On
- ↑ On one spree, when I left the key in my pocket, it had been stolen out of meanness, necessitating the embarrassment, and risk of suspicion, of having to ring at midnight for admission.
