As soon as I got to Euston Road I took to my heels and ran.

The clock at Euston Station showed five minutes past the hour.

At St Pancras I had no time to take a ticket, let alone that I had not settled upon my destination.

A porter told me the platform, and as I entered it I saw the train already in motion.
Two station officials blocked the way, but I dodged them and clambered into the last carriage.
Three minutes later, as we were roaring through the northern tunnels, an irate guard interviewed me.

He wrote out for me a ticket to Newton-Stewart, a name which had suddenly come back to my memory, and he conducted me from the first-class compartment where I had ensconced myself to a third-class smoker, occupied by a sailor and a stout woman with a child.