"It's all over," said Chester to himself. "That doctor's correct, and I must not trifle or I shall be laid by with something wrong in the head. That drugging began it, and I'm not right. I won't give up the quest, but I must get square first, and I can't do so here. I'll pack up and go on the Continent for a bit. Change may make me able to think consistently. Now my brain is in a whirl." He tried to reason calmly, and at last, not feeling in the humour to see and explain to his sister, he wrote to her briefly, telling her that the anxiety and worry of the case to which he had been called that night had completely unhinged him, and he found that the only thing he could do to recover his tone was to get right away for a time. He was going, he said, to see a colleague that morning, who would come and take charge of the practice, and he would write again from abroad. This done, he fastened down the envelope and left the letter upon the table, after which he went to his room, threw a few necessaries into a portmanteau, brought it down, with Aunt Grace carefully watching from the top of the staircase, and sent the servant for a cab. Five minutes later he was on his way to his club to consult the time-tables and guide-book as to the route to take. He was not long in deciding upon Tyrol as the starting-place for a long mountain tramp. There was a train at night, and without returning home he would dine at the club and start from there. He followed out the earlier portion of his programme, even to dining at the club, but afterwards, upon entering the smoking-room and taking a cigar, he found the place half full, and, longing for solitude, he went out to stroll down the steps and into the Park for an hour, ending by taking one of the seats under an old elm in the Mall and sitting back thinking of all that had happened during the past few weeks. He was once more going over the scenes by the wounded man's couch, and seeing again the every movement and look of his anxious sister, when he shrank back against the trunk of the great tree and let his chin sink upon his breast, for there were steps just to the right, and two gentlemen strolled by, one of them talking aloud angrily, and the following words smote like blows upon the listener's ears-- "Look here, if you want to quarrel, say so, Paddy. But you're no saint, so don't you begin preaching morality. I repeat I have taken a tremendous fancy to her; what then? As for Rob, curse him for a miserable prig! If it were not for the consequences I'm ready to wish that the shot had ended it, and I swear I'll--" The last words died out into the night air, and, save for the preternaturally excited state of his brain, Chester would not have heard so much. He sat up, and saw the figures of the brothers, who had passed him, growing indistinct as they went beyond the next lamp; and then he rose and followed.