his speed now he would fall--collapse. Like a top, his
speed kept him up.

Running straight ahead he would about run into the bus, which meant that
it was gaining on him. Again he bent his course to a point ahead of it.
Each maneuver of this kind narrowed the angle between himself and the
bus until soon he would be _pursuing_ it. The angle would be no more. He
would be running _after_ the bus and losing ground.

By a supreme, final spurt, he had now a fair chance to make the road and
intercept the bus before it reached the broad, level stretch to the
bridge. Should it reach that point his last chance would have vanished.

In this desperate pass he tried to shout, but found, as the spent runner
usually does, that he was almost voiceless. A feeble call was all he
could manage, and on the contrary wind and noise of the storm, this was
quite inadequate. He could only stumble on, borne up by his indomitable
will. He was weakening and he knew it.

Yet the light of the bus so near him gave him fresh hope, and with it
fresh strength. It seemed a kind of perversity of fate that he should
have reached a point ordinarily within earshot, and yet could not make
his approach known.

Just as the bus was passing his course, and when it was perhaps three or
four hundred feet distant, Hervey, putting all his strength into a final
spurt, sped forward in a blind frenzy like one possessed. He saw the bus
go by; heard the voices within it. Throwing his jack-knife from him in a
kind of frantic, maniacal desperation, he tried to scream, and finding
that he could not, that his voice was dead while yet his limbs lived,
and that his panting throat was clogged up and his nerves jangled and
uncontrollable, he bounded forward in a kind of delirium of concentrated
effort.

Then, suddenly, his foot sank into a hole. Perhaps with a little
calmness and patience he could have released it. But in his wild hurry
he tried to wrench it out. A sudden, sharp pain rewarded this insane
effort. He lost his balance and went sprawling to the ground, another
quick, excruciating twinge accompanying his fall, and lay there on the
soggy ground like a woodchuck in a trap.

The old bus went lumbering by.

CHAPTER IX

THE HERO

The best account of this business was given by Darby Curren, the bus
driver, or Curry, as the boys called him.

"We was jes' comin' onter the good road, we was, and I was jes' about
goin' ter give Lefty a taste o' the whip te