The seriousness of my plight came over me very clearly. I was without any means of identification. My passport was in the possession of a terrorist--or the police, having been found in the possession of a terrorist--my luggage contained one packet upon which a Russian would be sent to Siberia, another package which would send a Russian to prison, a revolver in my pocket at a time when the law permitted the military to shoot any person caught with a revolver _with his own weapon_, I was practically under arrest as a common thief because this gendarme’s money and papers had disappeared--the situation was so overwhelming that for the first time in my life I failed to see even a fighting chance. Murder has never, at any time, been in my heart. But there in that ghastly light--with the gendarme officer sitting opposite me like a panther about to spring, with the shadow of arrest, prison, and the gallows itself over me, the thought did enter my head to shoot my captor. It was his life against mine. I felt sure I could draw my revolver and fire before he could prevent me. But then what? The report of the shot would startle the passengers in other compartments, it would bring the trainmen--I could not drop out of the window of an express train. I realized that that was out of the question. My brain was never more active, never half so clear, it seemed to me, and my nerves were under absolute control. Yet I could not think of the faintest loophole of escape. In despair I sank back on my improvised pillow--I would see what the officer’s next move would be. A silhouette of a beam and cross-bar with a dangling rope weighted by a black mass set against a roseate eastern sky at dawn came before my eyes with all the clearness of a ship seen in mirage. At least I would be hung for an old sheep, I mused, remembering the array of points on which I would be arraigned, ranging in seriousness from the charge of being a pickpocket and common thief, to implication in a terroristic act. After some minutes the gendarme summoned the conductor, who looked me over critically and shook his head. Then the two began to search with apparent diligence for the lost articles, in and under the officer’s bed. When they had looked there pretty thoroughly the gendarme approached my things.