there with his notebook, "but the fact is--er--from that moment my
memory seems to have failed rather. I have no distinct recollection of
how I got home or what precisely I did.

"It appears I never went back to the inn at all. I only dimly recollect
racing down a long white road in the moonlight, past woods and villages,
still and deserted, and then the dawn came up, and I saw the towers of a
biggish town and so came to a station.

"But, long before that, I remember pausing somewhere on the road and
looking back to where the hill-town of my adventure stood up in the
moonlight, and thinking how exactly like a great monstrous cat it lay
there upon the plain, its huge front paws lying down the two main
streets, and the twin and broken towers of the cathedral marking its
torn ears against the sky. That picture stays in my mind with the utmost
vividness to this day.

"Another thing remains in my mind from that escape--namely, the sudden
sharp reminder that I had not paid my bill, and the decision I made,
standing there on the dusty highroad, that the small baggage I had left
behind would more than settle for my indebtedness.

"For the rest, I can only tell you that I got coffee and bread at a café
on the outskirts of this town I had come to, and soon after found my way
to the station and caught a train later in the day. That same evening I
reached London."

"And how long altogether," asked John Silence quietly, "do you think you
stayed in the town of the adventure?"