, quite secure. A moment later--' I
shudder. Why be thus at Fate's mercy always, when with a little
ordinary second sight...Yet no! That is the worst of a presentiment: it
never averts evil, it does but unnerve the victim. Best, after all, to
have only false presentiments like mine. Bolts that cannot be dodged
strike us kindliest from the blue.

And so let me be thankful that my sole emotion as I entered an empty
compartment at Holyhead was that craving for sleep which, after
midnight, overwhelms every traveller--especially the Saxon traveller
from tumultuous and quick-witted little Dublin. Mechanically,
comfortably, as I sank into a corner, I rolled my rug round me, laid my
feet against the opposite cushions, twitched up my coat collar above my
ears, twitched down my cap over my eyes.

It was not the jerk of the starting train that half awoke me, but the
consciousness that some one had flung himself into the compartment when
the train was already in motion. I saw a small man putting something in
the rack--a large black hand-bag. Through the haze of my sleep I saw
him, vaguely resented him. He had no business to have slammed the door
like that, no business to have jumped into a moving train, no business
to put that huge hand-bag into a rack which was 'for light baggage
only,' and no business to be wearing, at this hour and in this place, a
top-hat. These four peevish objections floated sleepily together round
my brain. It was not till the man turned round, and I met his eye, that
I awoke fully--awoke to danger. I had never seen a murderer, but I knew
that the man who was so steadfastly peering at me now...I shut my eyes.
I tried to think. Could I be dreaming? In books I had read of people
pinching themselves to see whether they were really awake. But in
actual life there never was any doubt on that score. The great thing
was that I should keep all my wits about me. Everything might depend on
presence of mind. Perhaps this murderer was mad. If you fix a lunatic
with your eye...

Screwing up my courage, I fixed the man with my eye. I had never seen
such a horrible little eye as his. It was a sane eye, too. It radiated
a cold and ruthless sanity. It belonged not to a man who would kill you
wantonly, but to one who would not scruple to kill you for a purpose,
and who would do the job quickly and neatly, and not be found out. Was
he physically strong? Though he looked very wiry, he was little and
narrow, like his eyes. He