out the table, and
still the talk went on.

It was interrupted quite suddenly by the advent of Red Pepper Burns
himself. Macauley saw him first, standing in the doorway between dining
room and office, but for an instant he did not know him. Macauley's
startled look caught Chester's attention; he sprang to his feet. At the
same moment the Scottish surgeon, following Chester's eyes, observed the
figure in the door. He was first to reach it.

"What's happened ye, lad?" he asked, and acted without waiting for an
answer. He threw a powerful arm about Burns's shoulders and led him,
reeling, back into the office where the air was purer.

They crowded round, doctors though they were and had many times sharply
ordered other people not to crowd. They could see at a glance that Burns
was very faint, that his right arm hung helpless at his side, that his
forehead wore a blackening bruise, and that his clothes were torn and
covered with dirt. For the rest they had to wait.

Grant took charge of his friend--the pupil whom he had never forgotten.
The arm was badly broken, too badly to be set without an anaesthetic. In
the inner office Van Horn, his dress coat off, gave the chloroform
while the Scotchman set the arm; and the American surgeons, no longer
crowding, but standing off respectfully as if at a clinic, looked on
critically. It was rapid and deft work, they admitted, especially since
the surgeon was using another man's splints, and the patient proved to
be one of the subjects who fight the anesthetic from beginning to end.

Chester, white-faced but plucky, stuck it out, but Macauley fled to
the outer air. Seeing a familiar long, dark form half on, half off the
driveway, he hurried toward it. A minute later he had all the unoccupied
guests around him on the lawn, and one of the Green Imp's lamps was
turned upon its crippled shape.

"By George, he's had a bad accident," one and another of them said
as they examined the car's injuries. The hood was jammed until they
wondered why the engine was not disabled; the left running-board was
nearly torn off and the fender a shapeless wreck. The green paint was
scraped and splintered along the left side.

"He must have come home by himself. How far, do you suppose?"

"Not far, driving with his left hand, and faint."

"He probably wasn't faint till he struck the indoor heat and the tobacco
smoke."

"He's come at least five miles. Look at that red clay on her sides.
There's no re