_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," Tom panted; "only my arm is worse than your old mud-guard. We're a pair of---- Can't you speak?" he added breathing the deadly fatigue he felt and putting his foot upon the pedal. "What--do--you--say? Huh?" And then _Uncle Sam_ answered. "Tk-tk-tk-tk-tk-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r---- Never mind your arm. Come ahead--hurry," he seemed to say. CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE "WHAT YOU HAVE TO DO--" Swiftly along the sun-flecked road sped the dispatch-rider. In the mellow freshness of the new day he rode, and the whir of his machine in its lightning flight mingled with the cheery songs of the birds, whose early morning chorus heartened and encouraged him. There was a balm in the fragrant atmosphere of the cool, gray morning which entered the soul of Tom Slade and whispered to him, _There is no such word as fail._ Out of the night he had come, out of travail, and brain-racking perplexity and torturing effort, crossing rushing waters and matching his splendid strength and towering will against obstacles, against fate, against everything. As he held the handle-bar of _Uncle Sam_ in that continuous handshake which they knew so well, his right arm felt numb and sore, and his whole body ached. _Uncle Sam's_ big, leering glass eye was smashed, his mud-guard wrenched off, and dried mud was upon his wheels. His rider's uniform was torn and water-soaked, his face black with grime. They made a good pair. Never a glance to right or left did the rider give, nor so much as a perfunctory nod to the few early risers who paused to stare at him as he sped by. In the little hamlet of Persan an old Frenchman sitting on a rustic seat before the village inn, removed his pipe from his mouth long enough to call, "_La cote?_" But never a word did the rider answer. Children, who, following the good example of the early bird, were already abroad, scurried out of his way, making a great clatter in their wooden shoes, and gaping until he passed beyond their sight. Over the bridge at Soignois he rushed, making its ramshackle planks rattle and throw up a cloud of dust from between the vibrating seams. Out of this cloud he emerged like a gray spectre, body bent, head low, gaze fixed and intense, leaving a pandemonium of dust and subsiding echoes behind him. At Virneu an old housewife threw open her blinds and seeing the dusty khaki of the rider, summoned her brood, who waved the tricolor from the casement, laughing and calling, "_Vive l'Amerique!_"