It was a dark little alley in the rear of the prison, and the buildings on the other side that abutted upon it were windowless.

He walked cautiously to the mouth of the alley, and looked up and down the street.

He saw no one, and, pulling his cap down over his eyes, he started instinctively toward the north, because it was to the far north that he wished to go.

He was fully aware that he faced great dangers, almost impossibilities.
Practically nothing was in his favor, save that he spoke excellent Spanish and also Mexican versions of it.
He went for several hundred yards along the rough and narrow street, and he began to shiver again.

Now it was from cold, which often grows intense at night in the great valley of Mexico.