Chester made his way across the lawn and in at the side door which led to the dimly lighted village offices of Redfield Pepper Burns, physician and surgeon. Not that the gilt-lettered sign on the glass of the office door read that way. “R. P. Burns, M.D.” was the brief inscription above the table of “office hours,” and the owner of the name invariably so curtailed it. But among his friends the full name had inevitably been turned into the nickname, for the big, red-haired, quick-tempered, warm-hearted fellow was “Red Pepper Burns” as irresistibly to them as he had been, a decade earlier, to his classmates in college. As Chester went in at the door a figure arose slowly from its position--flung full length, face downward, on a couch in the shadowy inner office and came into view. “Toothache? Dentist down the street,” said a blurred voice unsympathetically. Chester laughed. “Oh, come, Red,” said he. “Give me some of that headache dope. I'm all out.” “Glad to hear it. You don't get any more from me.” “Why not? I've got a sure-enough headache--I didn't come over to quiz you. The blamed thing whizzes like a buzz saw.” “Can't help it. Go soak it.” Chester advanced. “I'll get the powders myself, then. I know the bottle.” A substantial barrier interposed. “No, you don't. You've taken up six ounces of that stuff in seven days. You quit to-night.” “Look here, Red, what's the use of taking it out on me like that, if you are mad at something? If your head--” “I wish it did ache--like ten thousand furies. It might take some of the pressure off somewhere else,” growled R. P. Burns. He shut the door of the inner office hard behind him. “I thought so,” declared Arthur Chester, suddenly forgetting about his headache in his anxiety to know the explanation of the five cylinders. It was a small suburban town in which they lived, and if something had gone wrong it was a matter of common interest. “Can you tell me about it?” he asked--a little diffidently, for none knew better than he that things could not always be told, and that no lips were locked tighter than Red Pepper's when the secret was not his to tell. “Engine's on the blink. Got to go out and fix it,” was the unpromising reply. Burns picked up a sparkplug from the office desk as he spoke. “Had your dinner?” “Don't want it.” “Shall I go out with you?” The answer was an unintelligible grunt. As Chester was about to follow his friend out--for there could be no doubt that Red Pepper Burns was his friend in spite of this somewhat surly, though by no means unusual, treatment--another door opened tentatively, and a head was cautiously inserted. “Your dinner's ready, Doctor Burns,” said a doubtful voice. Burns turned. “Leave a pitcher of milk on the table for me, Cynthia,” he said in a gentler voice than Chester had yet heard from him tonight, crisp though it was. “Nothing else.”