Still I bounded forward, along one street, across another, dodging this way and that way, diving through courts and down alleys, till at last, breathless and exhausted, I was compelled, if only for one moment, to halt.
I must have run a mile at the very least.

I had never run a mile before that I knew of, and can safely say I have never run a mile since.

But, remembering that night, I have sometimes thought a fellow can never possibly know how quickly he can get over the distance till some day he has to run it with a policeman behind him.
When I pulled up and looked round me, my pursuers, if ever I had had any, had disappeared.

There was the steady tread of a policeman on the opposite side of the road, but he, I knew, was not after me.

And there was the distant rumble of a cab, but that was ahead of me and not behind me.