In the meantime, Fleming, left battered and disheveled on the country road, was wild with pain and rage. His heart was a tumult of seething emotions. He had undergone that afternoon more humiliation than comes to most men in a lifetime. He had been thwarted in his impudent venture. He had been taken by the collar and shaken as a rat by a terrier. He had had to get down on his knees in the dirt of the road and humbly apologize. And then he had been bruised and beaten until he had begged for mercy.