They will stand up to their tasks as long as the candle of life flickers and flares in their wrecked bodies, but one by one they will lie down and die long before there is any need of it, had they paid the slightest attention to the demands of nature.
Frank Merriwell had not been born strong and healthy. His mother was an invalid, and he had inherited a weak body. But, fortunately, he had been given brains with which to think and reason. And he had used those brains! That was the best part of it.
Having found that others had acquired health by exercise and by obeying the laws of nature, he had made a resolve to do the same. He was stubborn, and, having made such a resolve, he kept at the work day after day, week after week, year after year.
What a glorious reward was his! From a weak boy he had become a strong, supple, superb youth, a typical young American of the very highest class, and all by his own efforts! Was not the reward sufficient for the effort?
It had not always been by chance, as on this occasion, that his enemies had failed to wreak upon him the injuries they sought to inflict. Had he been weak they must have succeeded many times. But one by one they had fallen before him, and he remained triumphant and unharmed.
“The fellow bears a charmed life,” thought Bertrand Defarge. “It’s no use—he can’t be harmed!”
Once more he felt for his handkerchief to wipe from his face the beads of cold perspiration that started forth; but the handkerchief was not in the pocket where he fancied he had thrust it.
“Where could the stone have come from?” Bert Dashleigh was asking. “You don’t suppose——”
“Hello, Defarge!” exclaimed one of a little bunch of men that came up. “How the dickens did you get ahead of us? We thought you behind with the tail-enders.”
“What’s the matter here?” asked another, and, to Bertrand’s relief, they all pressed forward to learn what had happened.