He made an inarticulate noise in his throat like a man imperfectly stunned by a blow on the head.

It was pitiful.
'I didn't catch up again with him till well outside the gate.

I had even to trot a bit at the last, but when, out of breath at his elbow, I taxed him with running away, he said, "Never!" and at once turned at bay.

I explained I never meant to say he was running away from _me_.

"From no man--from not a single man on earth," he affirmed with a stubborn mien.
I forbore to point out the one obvious exception which would hold good for the bravest of us; I thought he would find out by himself very soon.
He looked at me patiently while I was thinking of something to say, but I could find nothing on the spur of the moment, and he began to walk on.
I kept up, and anxious not to lose him, I said hurriedly that I couldn't think of leaving him under a false impression of my--of my--I stammered.
The stupidity of the phrase appalled me while I was trying to finish it, but the power of sentences has nothing to do with their sense or the logic of their construction.