and the alarm bell of the
house still ringing. What was in my head was chiefly this, that I was
going out upon the road with this madman for a companion, and that
sooner or later he would make an end of me. Judge of my position,
knowing, as I did, that a murderer sat in the tonneau behind, and that
he held a revolver at full cock in his hand. My God! it was an awful
journey, the most awful I shall ever make.

He would kill me when it suited him to do it. I was as sure of it as
of my own existence. In one mile or twenty, here in the lanes of
Cambridgeshire, or over yonder when we drew near to the sea, this
madman would do the business. More fearful than any danger a man can
face was this peril at the back of me. I listened for a word or sound
from him; I tried to look behind me and see what he was doing. He
never made a movement, and for miles we roared along that silent road,
through the mists and the darkness to the unknown goal--a murderer and
his victim, as I surely believed myself to be.

There is many a man who has the nerve for a sudden call, but few who
can stand a trial long sustained. All that I can tell you of what fear
is like, the fear of swift death, and of the pain and torture of it,
would convey nothing to you of my sensations during that mad drive.
Sometimes I could almost have wished that he would make an end of it
then and there, shooting me in mercy where I sat, and sparing me the
agony of uncertainty. But mile after mile we went without a sound from
him; and when, in sheer despair, I slowed down and asked him a
direction, he was on me like a tiger, and I must race again for very
life. Through Haverhill, thence to Sibil Ingham and Halstead--ay,
until the very spires of Colchester stood out in the dawn light, that
race went on. And I began to say that he might spare me after all,
that I was necessary to him, and that his destination was Harwich and
the morning steamer to Holland. Fool! it was then he fired at me, then
that the end came.

I thought that I heard him move; some instinct--for there is an
instinct in these things, let others say what they please--caused me to
turn half about, and detect him standing in the tonneau. No time for
prudence then, no time for resolution or anything but that fear of
death which paralyses the limbs and seems to still the very heart.
With a cry that was awful to hear, he fired his pistol, and I heard the
report of it as thunder in my ear, the while