The advice, though well meant, was unfortunate. As William attempted to follow both it and his wife, the soldier moved forward and struck him a cuff on the side of the head that deposited him neatly on the grass. Griselda, who—in order to convey her contempt for official authority and disgust at official insolence—had been pointedly surveying the meeting of hill and horizon, heard a whack and scuffle, a guttural grunt and a gasp; and turned to see William, with a hand to his cheek, lying prone at the feet of his assailant. She rounded on the man like a lion, and perhaps, with her suffragette training behind her, would have landed him a cuff in his turn; but as she raised her arm it was caught from behind and she found herself suddenly helpless in the grasp of a second grey-clad soldier—who, when he heard his comrade’s hail, had come running out of the house. "Let me go," she cried, wriggling in his grasp as she had wriggled aforetime in the hands of a London policeman, and kicking him deftly on the shins as she had been wont to kick Robert on his. For answer he shook her to the accompaniment of what sounded like curses—shook her vehemently, till her hat came off and her hair fell down, till her teeth rattled and the landscape danced about her. When he released her, with the final indignity of a butt with the knee in the rear, she collapsed on the grass by her husband’s side in a crumpled, disreputable heap. There for a minute or two she lay gasping and inarticulate—until, as her breath came back and the landscape ceased to gyrate, she dragged herself up into a sitting position and thrust back the hair from her eyes. William, a yard or two away, was also in a sitting position with his hand pressed against his cheekbone; while over him stood the assailants in field-grey, apparently snapping out questions. "I don’t understand," she heard him protest feebly, "I tell you I don’t understand. Griselda, can’t you explain to them that I don’t speak French?" "Comprends pas," said Griselda, swallowing back tears of rage. "Comprends pas—so it’s not a bit of good your talking to us. Parlez pas français—but that won’t prevent me from reporting you for this disgraceful assault. You cowards—you abominable cowards! You’re worse than the police at home, which is saying a good deal. I wonder you’re not ashamed of yourselves. I’ve been arrested three times and I’ve never been treated like this." At this juncture one of the men in field-grey seized William by the collar and proceeded to turn out his pockets—extracting from their recesses a purse, a pipe, a handkerchief, a fountain pen, and a green-covered Cook’s ticket. He snapped back the elastic on the Cook’s ticket, and turned the leaves that remained for the journey home. "London," he ejaculated suddenly, pronouncing the vowels in un-English fashion as O’s. "London!" his companion echoed him—and then, as if moved by a common impulse, they called on the name of Heinz.