“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 red clay like that around here except in one place—at the old mill on the Red Bank road.” Chester demonstrated his theory excitedly. “I ought to know, I've ridden with him on every out-of-the-way by-path in the county, first and last. There's a fright of a hill just there.”
“Five miles with that arm? Gee!” This was Buller.
“Plucky,” was Grayson's comment, and there was a general agreement among the men standing round.
Macauley put his shoulder to the Imp. “Let's push her in, fellows,” he proposed. He had forgotten that they were medical gentlemen of position. “I don't seem to want to drive her just now,” he explained.
They pushed the Imp to the red barn and shut it in with its injuries. Then they went back to the house, where presently Burns came out from under his anaesthetic and lay looking at his guests from under the bandage which swathed his head.
“I'm mighty sorry to have broken up the fun this way, gentlemen,” he said with a pale sort of smile. “Grayson was telling a story when I butted in, I think. Finish it, will you, Grayson?”
“Not much. Yours is the story we want now, if you're up to telling it. What happened out there on the Red Bank road?”