It was queer to watch him, to thus spend the night with a murderer, such a murderer! It was fascinating to try to imagine his thoughts. Really he seemed to have none; perhaps it was mercifully so ordained. No human brain could surely bear a realisation of such crimes as his. A mental numbness, Nature's anodyne, must overtake the brutal criminal, like the sullen drowsiness of the man-eating tiger in his cage. He sat there, nonchalantly puffing at interminable cigarettes which his captor handed him, his red-white-and-blue blanket thrown round his shoulders and contrasting vividly with the yellow-whiteness of the neck and dead-black of his cropped head. He knew he was going to be shot.... But stay! Not so fast! Perhaps he didn't. What's this? The detective leaps up, the sleeping one wakes: they have sprung on the blanketed figure. What's all the matter? Simply that as the young brute smoked and chatted he has twisted and twisted his lithe, small hand till it slips from the jarvies, and he sits there, as the train rolls heavily onward through the mountain gorges, ready in a minute to spring out of the car-window and be lost in the woods. But he is too late. Some jerk of the manacled arm has aroused suspicion. The blanket is whipped off. The steel band snaps again on that delicate wrist. The two detectives close up at his sides. He says nothing; he never flinches, never moves. He has gambled with his life and lost: now he has lost again, that's all; that and the ounce of lead which awaits his savage heart in Mexico. He motions that he will sleep, and as the train rattles into Esperanza and the chilling air from the mountains makes your teeth chatter, he lies sound asleep, his cruel face, almost beautiful in repose, pillowed on his rounded arm. There are more coffee and sweet rolls to be had at Esperanza, what time the climbing engine is unhooked and car-conductors--their collars to their ears--stamp their feet and, cabman-fashion, beat their breasts to keep warm. And then we are off again, this time fairly on the level, for though we have still two thousand feet to climb ere we reach the dreary plains around the capital, we have more than 150 miles in which to do it. It is between one and two, and in the past six hours the temperature has fallen thirty-five or forty degrees. We are glad to have the windows closed, save at the quaint little Indian towns where on the low platforms stand rows of Mexican porters looking for all the world like a chorus of conspirators in a comic opera, their blankets drawn right across their faces and mouths, yashmak-fashion, their steeple hats towering black in the starlight.