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.