y spot where he stood.

In a kind of cold despair, he stooped, reached for a board which lay
near, and retreating a little, stood upon it, watching the surging water
in its heedless career. This one board was all that was left of the
bridge over which Tom Slade and _Uncle Sam_ were to have rushed in their
race with the dawn. Already the first glimmering of gray was discernible
in the sky behind him, and Tom looked at _Uncle Sam_ as if for council
in his dilemma. The dawn would not require any bridge to get across.

"We're checked in our grand drive, kind of," he said, with a pathetic
disappointment which his odd way of putting it did not disguise. "We're
checked, that's all, just like the Germans were--kind of."

He knelt and let down the rest of his machine so that it might stand
unaided, as if he would be considerate of those mud-covered, weary
wheels.

And meanwhile the minutes passed.

"Anyway, you did _your_ part," he muttered. And then, "If you only could
swim."

It was evident that the recent rains had swollen the stream which
ordinarily flowed in the narrow bed between slanting shores so that the
rushing water filled the whole space between the declivities and was
even flooding the two ends of road which had been connected by a bridge.
An old ramshackle house, which Tom thought might once have been a
boathouse, stood near, the water lapping its underpinning. Close by it
was a buoyed mooring float six or eight feet square, bobbing in the
rushing water. One of the four air-tight barrels which supported it had
caught in the mud and kept the buoyant, raft-like platform from being
carried downstream in the rush of water.

Holding his flashlight to his watch Tom saw that it was nearly fifteen
minutes past four and he believed that about forty miles of road lay
ahead of him. Slowly, silently, the first pale tint of gray in the sky
behind him took on a more substantial hue, revealing the gaunt, black
outlines of trees and painting the sun-dried, ragged shingles on the
little house a dull silvery color.

"Anyway, you stood by me and it ain't your fault," Tom muttered
disconsolately. He turned the handle bar this way and that, so that
_Uncle Sam's_ one big eye peered uncannily across the flooded stream and
flickered up the road upon the other side, which wound up the hillside
and away into the country beyond. The big, peering eye seemed to look
longingly upon that road.

Then Tom was seized with a kind of frant