Chester, catching a glimpse of a brightly lighted dining-room and a table lavishly spread, undertook to remonstrate. He had seen the housekeeper's disappointed face, also. But Burns cut him short. “Come along--if you must,” said he, and stalked out into the night. For an hour, in the light from one of the Green Imp's lamps, Chester sat on an overturned box and watched Burns work. He worked savagely, as if applying surgical measures to a mood as well as to a machine. He worked like a skilled mechanic as well; every turn of a nut, every polish of a thread meaning definite means to an end. The night was hot and he had thrown off coat and collar and rolled his sleeves high, so a brawny arm gleamed in the bright lamplight, and the open shirt exposed a powerful neck. Chester, who was of slighter build and not as tall as he would have liked to be, watched enviously. “Whatever goes wrong with your affairs, Red,” he observed suddenly, breaking a long interval during which the engine had been made to throb and whirl like the “ten thousand furies” to whom its engineer had lately made allusion, “you have the tremendous asset of a magnificent body to fall back on for comfort.” With a movement of the hand Burns stopped his engine, now running quietly, and stood up straight. He threw out one bare arm, grimy and oily with his labours. “Two hours ago,” said he in a voice now controlled and solemn, “if by cutting off that right arm at the shoulder I could have saved a human life I'd have done it.” “And now,” retorted Chester quickly, “now, two hours after--would you cut it off now?” Red Pepper looked at him. The arm dropped. “No,” said he, “I wouldn't. Not for a dozen lives like that. I'm not heroic, after all--only hot and cold by jumps, like a thermometer. But I ache all over, just the same. She runs like a bird now. Jump in--we'll take a spin and try her out on the road. I may need her before midnight.” Nothing loth, for he knew the Green Imp and her driver and had had many a swift run on a moonlight night before in the same company, Chester took the slim roadster's other seat, watching the long green hood point the way down the driveway, past the porch where the women, in white gowns showing coolly in the light from the arc lamp at the corner of the street, called a goodbye. “Back--some time,” replied Chester's voice, rising above the low purr of the engine with a note of satisfaction in it. The figure beside him, still in open, white shirt, with bare arms and uncovered, thick thatch of red hair, did not turn its head. “Arthur's never so happy as when he's out with Red in the Green Imp,” Winifred said to her guest as the roadster shot away under the elms which drooped beneath the arc light.