this point he had been both hurt and angry. After a moment he
said, with his eyes on the floor, but in a different tone from
any he had yet used: "Go ahead, Red. I'll try to prove I have
some stuff in me yet."

"Of course you have." Burns's hand was on his friend's
shoulder. "That's what I'm counting on. Prove it by
following directions to the letter. And begin by coming with
me for a trip into the country. I have to see a case before I
go to bed, and the air will do your head good."

It was the first of many similar trips. Arthur Chester may
fairly have been said to spend the succeeding fortnight in the
company of the Green Imp and its driver. From morning till
night, and often in the night itself when he found it
impossible to sleep, he was living in the open air by means of
this device. Of walking, also, he did an increasing amount as
his strength grew under the regimen Burns insisted upon. But
for the first week, in spite of all the help his physician
could give him, he found himself indeed involved in a fierce
struggle - a struggle with shaken and unmanageable nerves;
with a desperate craving for the soothing, uplifting effect of
the drug to which he was forced to admit he had become
perilously accustomed; with a black depression of spirit which
was worse than anything else he had to combat.

It was at the worst of one of these periods of darkness that,
alone with his patient upon a hilltop where the two had
climbed, leaving the Green Imp at a point where the road had
become impossible, Burns said suddenly: