new
the man understood but little of it--or just out of the blunt honesty
which refused to twist everything German into a thing of evil, it would
be hard to say. He had about him that quality of candor which could not
be shaken even by righteous enmity.

Tearing two strips from his shirt, he used the narrower one to make a
tourniquet, which he tied above the man's ankle.

"If you haven't got poison in it, it won't be so bad," he said. "Now
I'll take off that chain."

He raised his machine upon its rest so that the power wheel was free of
the ground. Then, to the wounded Boche's puzzled surprise, he removed
the tire and fumbling in his little tool kit he took out a piece of
emery cloth which he used for cleaning his plugs and platinum contact
points, and bent it over the edge of the rim, binding it to the spokes
with the length of insulated wire which he always carried. It was a
crude and makeshift contrivance at best, but at last he succeeded, by
dint of much bending and winding and tying of the pliable copper wire
among the spokes of the wheel, in fastening the emery cloth over the
fairly sharp rim so that it stayed in place when he started his power
and in about two revolutions it cut a piece of wire with which he tested
the power of his improvised mechanical file.

"Often I sharpened a jackknife that way on the fly-wheel of a motor
boat," he said. The Boche did not understand him, but he was quick to
see the possibilities of this whirling hacksaw and he seemed to
acknowledge, with as much grace as a German may, the Yankee ingenuity of
his liberator.

"Give me your wrist," said Tom, reaching for it; "I won't hurt it any
more than I have to; here--here's a good scheme."

He carefully stuffed his handkerchief around under the metal band which
encircled the soldier's wrist and having thus formed a cushion to
receive the pressure and protect the raw flesh, he closed his switch
again and gently subjected the manacle to the revolving wheel, holding
it upon the edge of the concave tire bed.

If the emery cloth had extended all the way around the wheel he could
have taken the manacle off in less time than it had taken Kaiser Bill to
lock it on, for the contrivance rivalled a buzzsaw. As it was, he had
to stop every minute or two to rearrange the worn emery cloth and bind
it in place anew. But for all that he succeeded in less than fifteen
minutes in working a furrow almost through the metal band so that a
little care