What does " ran the thought " mean? Could you explain? Jim's eyes, wandering in the intervals of his answers, rested upon a white man who sat apart from the others, with quiet eyes that glanced straight. Jim answered another question and was tempted to cry out, "What's the good of this!" He tapped with his foot slightly, bit his lip, and looked away over the heads. He met the eyes of the white man. The glance directed at him was not the fascinated stare of the others. It was an act of intelligent volition. Jim between two questions forgot himself so far as to find leisure for a thought. This fellow — ran the thought — looks at me as though he could see somebody or something past my shoulder. He had come across that man before — in the street perhaps. He was positive he had never spoken to him. For days, for many days, he had spoken to no one but had held silent, incoherent, and endless conversation with himself, like a prisoner alone in his cell or like a wayfarer lost in a wilderness.