The next moment I knew not what was happening.  I was overborne by the crowd.  The confined space was filled with shrieks and yells and curses.  Blows were falling on me.  Hands were ripping and tearing at my flesh and garments.  I felt that I was being torn to pieces.  I was being borne down, suffocated.  Some strong hand gripped my shoulder in the thick of the press and was dragging fiercely at me.  Between pain and pressure I fainted.  Hartman never came out of that entrance.  He had shielded me and received the first brunt of the attack.  This had saved me, for the jam had quickly become too dense for anything more than the mad gripping and tearing of hands.

I came to in the midst of wild movement.  All about me was the same movement.  I had been caught up in a monstrous flood that was sweeping me I knew not whither.  Fresh air was on my cheek and biting sweetly in my lungs.  Faint and dizzy, I was vaguely aware of a strong arm around my body under the arms, and half-lifting me and dragging me along.  Feebly my own limbs were helping me.  In front of me I could see the moving back of a man’s coat.  It had been slit from top to bottom along the centre seam, and it pulsed rhythmically, the slit opening and closing regularly with every leap of the wearer.  This phenomenon fascinated me for a time, while my senses were coming back to me.  Next I became aware of stinging cheeks and nose, and could feel blood dripping on my face.  My hat was gone.  My hair was down and flying, and from the stinging of the scalp I managed to recollect a hand in the press of the entrance that had torn at my hair.  My chest and arms were bruised and aching in a score of places.

My brain grew clearer, and I turned as I ran and looked at the man who was holding me up.  He it was who had dragged me out and saved me.  He noticed my movement.

“It’s all right!” he shouted hoarsely.  “I knew you on the instant.”

I failed to recognize him, but before I could speak I trod upon something that was alive and that squirmed under my foot.  I was swept on by those behind and could not look down and see, and yet I knew that it was a woman who had fallen and who was being trampled into the pavement by thousands of successive feet.

“It’s all right,” he repeated.  “I’m Garthwaite.”

He was bearded and gaunt and dirty, but I succeeded in remembering him as the stalwart youth that had spent several months in our Glen Ellen refuge three years before.  He passed me the signals of the Iron Heel’s secret service, in token that he, too, was in its employ.

“I’ll get you out of this as soon as I can get a chance,” he assured me.  “But watch your footing.  On your life don’t stumble and go down.”