He must have carried out in reality the miserable confusion in his brain, for it seemed afterwards that he had done nothing but go round and round a circle of streets and lanes, surrounding the point where his chambers were, and where he was seen by various people, appearing and reappearing, always at a very rapid pace, through the lingering darkness of the night. After a while, in all probability, recollection failed him, for his horrible sensations seemed to fade into a dull, fatigued consciousness of circling and winding, of always the band on his ankles tightening, drawing him nearer; but no longer any clear idea of what was the impending doom, from which only this perpetual movement, this effort to keep on, saved him for a time. Finally, when daylight had come, surprising and alarming him back into some effort of intelligence, he found himself at the door of his club, where the servants were but beginning to open the shutters, to sweep and clean out, in preparation for the day. He crept in there somehow as a dog might creep into a barn, or take refuge in an empty kennel, and threw himself shivering into an easy-chair, and had a cup of coffee brought him by a compassionate waiter, who saw that he had been up all night. The same kind hands covered him up when he began in his exhaustion to doze. And there he lay and slept through all the early morning hours, while still there was nobody to comment upon his appearance or to disturb him. The servants of the club chattered indeed among themselves; they shook their heads, and said he had been up to something or other as he hadn’t ought to. They suggested to each other that he had been in bad company, that he had been drugged, which was the most likely thing to account for his dazed appearance. But he lay and slept through it all, unconscious in the profound sleep of entire exhaustion. Most likely it was that exhaustion and the constant physical movement and keen air of the night which saved his brain after all.