If it was going to help me, it still would be effective; if it went against me, I would be just as dead.

I began to think out other plans.

Plans of escape were foolish.

I could have crawled out of the window to the rain gutter, but before I had reached the rooftree I would have been shot.

And bribing the sentry, even were he willing to be insulted, would not have taken me farther than the stairs, where there were other sentries.