midnight
There were plenty of men there who would gladly have seen Fenton leave the club ; the members of the Executive Committee were smarting under the rebuke he had brought upon them ; but the excitement of the moment , the admiration which courage and dash always excite , carried all before them . The motion was voted with noise enough to make it at least seem hearty , and with no outspoken negatives to prevent its appearing unanimous . His friends dragged him back and insisted upon drinking with him , the formalities of adjournment being swallowed up in the uproar . His triumph could not have been more complete , and its celebration , with much discussion , much congratulation and not a little wine , lasted until midnight . And all the while , as he talked and jested and argued and laughed and drank , his brain was playing with the question of right and wrong as a child with a shuttlecock . Without a hearty conviction of the absolute justice of the principle for which he contended , it is doubtful if Fenton could have acted the lie of assumed innocence . He had entangled the question of his guilt with that of the propriety of the action of the committee so inextricably that one could scarcely be taken up without the other .