Slowly, silently, the first pale tint of gray in the sky behind him took on a more substantial hue, revealing the gaunt, black outlines of trees and painting the sun-dried, ragged shingles on the little house a dull silvery color.
"Anyway, you stood by me and it ain't your fault," Tom muttered disconsolately.

He turned the handle bar this way and that, so that _Uncle Sam's_ one big eye peered uncannily across the flooded stream and flickered up the road upon the other side, which wound up the hillside and away into the country beyond.

The big, peering eye seemed to look longingly upon that road.
Then Tom was seized with a kind of frantic rebellion against fate--the same futile passion which causes a convict to wrench madly at the bars of his cell.

The glimpse of that illuminated stretch of road across the flooded stream drove him to distraction.

Baffled, powerless, his wonted stolidness left him, and he cast his eyes here and there with a sort of challenge born of despair and desperation.
Slowly, gently, the hazy dawn stole over the sky and the roof of dried and ragged shingles seemed as if it were covered with gray dust.
Presently the light would flicker upon those black, mad waters and laugh at Tom from the other side.
And meanwhile the minutes passed.
He believed that he could swim the torrent and make a landing even though the rush of water carried him somewhat downstream.