The train was crawling along at a foot's pace; my fellow-traveller was not a formidable one.

I opened the door and jumped out on to the line.
I was uninjured, and C-- was not a mile away.

If I ran I might still be there to meet the back of the train and Michael McCrane.
But as I began to run a grating sound behind me warned me that the train had suddenly pulled up, and a shout proclaimed that I was being pursued.
Half a dozen passengers and the guard--none of them pressed for time-- joined in the hue and cry.
What it was all about I cannot imagine; all I know is that that evening, in the meadows near C--, a wretched Cockney, in a battered chimney-pot hat, and carrying an umbrella, was wantonly run to earth by a handful of natives, and that an hour later the same unhappy person was clapped in the village lock-up for the night as a suspicious character! It had all been tending to this.

Fate had marked me for her own, and run me down at last.

Perhaps I _was_ a criminal after all, and did not know it.