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...