any event, he had no alternative choice and time was flying. After what
he had already done he felt he could do anything. Success, however
wearying and exhausting, gives one a certain working capital of
strength, and having succeeded so far he would not now fail. His success
in crossing had given him that working capital of resolution and
incentive whence came his superhuman strength and overmastering resolve
in that lonely tree. And he would not fail now.

Yet he could not bring himself to look at his watch. He was willing to
venture a guess, from the sun, as to what time it was, but he could not
clinch the knowledge by a look at the cruel, uncompromising little
glass-faced autocrat in his pocket. He preferred to work in the less
disheartening element of uncertainty. He did not want to know the hard,
cold truth--not till he was moving.

Here now was the need of nice calculating, and Tom eyed the shore and
the tree and the machine with the appraising glance of a wrestler eyeing
his opponent. He broke several branches from the tree, laying them so as
to form a kind of springy, leafy mound close to the brink. Then
standing knee-deep he wiggled the wheel's rim very cautiously out to the
end of its hanger, so that it just balanced there.

One more grand drive, one more effort of unyielding strength and
accurate dexterity and--_he would be upon the road_.

The thought acted as a stimulant. Lodging one hand under the seat of the
machine and the other upon a stout bar of the mechanism which he thought
would afford him just the play and swing he needed, he joggled the wheel
off its hanger, and with a wide sweep, in which he skillfully minimized
the heavy weight, he swung the machine onto the springy bed which he had
made to receive it.

Then, as the comrade of a wounded soldier may bend over him, he knelt
down beside his companion upon the makeshift, leafy couch.

"Are you all right?" he asked in the agitation of his triumphant effort.

_Uncle Sam_ did not answer.

He stood the machine upright and lowered the rest so that it could stand
unaided; and he tore away the remnant of mud-guard which _Uncle Sam_ had
sacrificed in his role of combination engine and paddle-wheel.

"You've got the wires all tangled up in your spokes," Tom said; "you
look like a--a wreck. What do you want with those old sticks of
shingles? How are you off for gas--you--you old tramp?"

_Uncle Sam_ did not answer.

"Anyway, you're all right,"