that
the least move caused him pain.

But by looking into the water he was able to see that this little stub
of a limb might serve as a hook on which the machine might be hung if he
could clear away the leafy twigs which grew from it, and if he could
succeed in raising the cycle and slipping the wheel over it. That would
not end his predicament but it would save the machine, relieve him for a
few moments, and give him time to think.

_For a few moments!_ They were fleeting by--the moments.

There is a strength born of desperation--a strength of will which is
conjured into physical power in the last extremity. It is when the
frantic, baffled spirit calls aloud to rally every failing muscle and
weakening nerve. It is then that the lips tighten and the eyes become as
steel, as the last reserves waiting in the entrenchments of the soul are
summoned up to re-enforce the losing cause.

And there in that tree, on the brink of the heedless, rushing waters
which crossed the highroad to Dieppe was going to be fought out one of
the most desperate battles of the whole war. There, in the mocking light
of the paling dawn, Tom Slade, his big mouth set like a vice, and with
every last reserve he could command, was going to make his last cast of
the dice--let go, give up--or, _hold on_.

_Let go!_ Of all the inglorious forms of defeat or surrender! _To let
go!_ To be struck down, to be taken prisoner, to be----

But to _let go_! The bulldog, the snapping turtle, seemed like very
heroes now.

"He always said I had a good muscle--he liked to feel it," he muttered.
"And besides, _she_ said she guessed I was strong."

He was thinking of Margaret Ellison, away back in America, and of Roscoe
Bent, as he had known him there. When he muttered again there was a
beseeching pathos in his voice which would have pierced the heart of
anyone who could have seen him struggling still against fate, in this
all but hopeless predicament.

But no one saw him except the sun who was raising his head above the
horizon as a soldier steals a cautious look over the trench parapet.

There would be no report of this affair.

He lowered his chest to the limb, wound his legs around it and for a
second lay there while he tightened and set his legs, as one will
tighten a belt against some impending strain. Not another fraction of an
inch could he have tightened those encircling legs.

And now the fateful second was come. It had to come quickly for his
s