Yet for some reason he did not go, in the way that men so often do not do things that they think on the whole would be very good things to do.

An hour or two later he knew that the good people there would have gone to bed and that he had no longer the option of going.

He did not go to bed himself.

He had not had enough exercise that day to make him sleepy; and then, too, he thought he would sit up and see the old year out.

He had an indistinct idea that it was rather a virtuous thing to do, rather more pious than sleeping the night through just as if it were any other night.