They took all he had--his goats and his clothes, and everything in the place--and then they beat him.

Then the Russians retired, beat him again, _en passant_ as it were, and then came the Germans.

They fired his house with their guns, pulled off his boots, and beat him.

Then he entered the service of the Germans, carrying water and wood, and received his food and beatings in return.
But to-day he had got into trouble with them in some incomprehensible fashion; no food after that, only the beatings; and was thrown into the street.
"The beatings he referred to as something altogether natural.

They were for him the natural accompaniment to any sort of action--but he could not live on beatings alone.
"I gave him what I had on me--money and cigars--told him the number of my house, and said he could come to-morrow, when I could get him a pass to go off somewhere where there were no Germans and no Russians, and try to get him a place of some sort where he would be fed and not beaten.