an hour after midnight
His stream of life should flow , so he declared , through Burton-on-Trent . He was done with noxious liquids , and proposed to bathe his spirit clear in the vats of Bass and Allsopp . Wilder was-not outside the sphere of reformation , and Guinness would share with the others the credit of his uprising . He drank a tankard or two of each and either as an evidence of good faith , and he left an hour after midnight , more sober than Paul had ever known him at such a time . He had talked a heap of brilliant sense and nonsense , and had borrowed two half crowns . Paul went to bed almost regretting the loss of even this mad companionship , and tossed , half-dozing , on a shifting sea of troubles . Suddenly , when he had lost all consciousness of time and place , there came a thundering summons at his door , and in answer to his startled call there came in a huge policeman in a greatcoat and a helmet , and behind him a quaking waiter with a candle in a glass funnel .