There was one question they asked him over and over: "But are you sure the call will come ?" "As sure as that we stand here; and it will come before the week is out.
We must be ready!" Often, when he left them, they would turn from the work in hand, leaving it as it was, to lie unfinished in the fields, and make their way slowly and thoughtfully to their homes, while Tom climbed into his creaking little wagon once more, only to fall into the same dull, hunched-over attitude.

He had many things to think out before he faced Rouen and Crailey Gray again, and more to fight through to the end with himself.
Three days he took for it, three days driving through the soft May weather behind the kind, old jog-trotting horse; three days on the road, from farm-house to farm-house and from field to field, from cabin of the woods to cabin in the clearing.

Tossing unhappily at night, he lay sleepless till dawn, though not because of the hard beds; and when daylight came, journeyed steadily on again, over the vagabond little hills that had gypsied it so far into the prairie-land in their wanderings from their range on the Ohio, and, passing the hills, went on through the flat forest-land, always hunched over dismally in the creaking wagon.
But on the evening of the third day he drove into town, with the stoop out of his shoulders and the lustre back in his eyes.

He was haggard, gray, dusty, but he had solved his puzzle, and one thing was clear in his mind as the thing that he would do.

He patted the old horse a hearty farewell as he left him with the liveryman from whom he had hired him, and strode up Main Street with the air of a man who is going somewhere.
It was late, but there were more lights than usual in the windows and more people on the streets.