I assented quietly, not wanting to discuss a trifle and feeling in deadly terror--alone at night in an express with a man not drunk enough to be helpless, but too drunk to be controlled.

Never before nor since have I felt so thoroughly frightened.

I can see him still, swaying as he stood, with eyes bleared and pendulous lips--but I sat there quiet and outwardly unmoved, as is always my impulse in danger till I see some way of escape, only grasping a penknife in my pocket, with a desperate resolve to use my feeble weapon as soon as the need arose.

The man came towards me with a fatuous leer, when a jarring noise was heard and the train began to slacken.
"What is that ?" stammered my drunken companion.
"They are putting on the brakes to stop the train," I answered very slowly and distinctly, though a very passion of relief made it hard to say quietly the measured words.
The man sat down stupidly, staring at me, and in a minute or two the train pulled up at a station--it had been stopped by signal.

My immobility was gone.