"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.
As he held the handle-bar of _Uncle Sam_ in that continuous handshake which they knew so well, his right arm felt numb and sore, and his whole body ached.

_Uncle Sam's_ big, leering glass eye was smashed, his mud-guard wrenched off, and dried mud was upon his wheels.

His rider's uniform was torn and water-soaked, his face black with grime.