THE GOVERNMENT ACCEPTS
"Whew! Let me sit down somewhere and get my breath!" gasped Tom, when it was all over.
"I should think you would want a bit of quiet," replied Ned. "You've been on the jump since early morning."
"Bless my dining-room table!" cried Mr. Damon. "I should say so! I'll go tell the cook to get us all a good meal—we need it," for a competent cook had been installed in the old farmhouse where Tom and his party had their headquarters.
"But you did the trick, Tom, old man!" exclaimed Ned, fervently, as he looked down the valley and saw the receding water. For, with the opening of the channel into the other valley the flood, at no time particularly dangerous near Preston, was subsiding rapidly.
"He sure did," declared the foreman. "No one else could have done it, either."
"Oh, I don't know," spoke Tom, modestly. "It just happened so. There was one minute, though, after I got to the place in Preston where I had stored the powder, that I didn't know whether I would succeed or not."
"How was that?" asked Mr. Damon.
"Why, in my hurry and excitement I forgot the key to the underground storeroom where I had put the explosive. I knew there was no time to get another, so I took a chance and burst in the door with an axe I found in the freight depot."
"I should say you did take a chance!" declared Ned, who knew how "freaky" the high explosive was, and how likely it was, at times, to be set off by the least concussion.