Page:America Fallen!.djvu/150

138 them—the Government—or they will make a bag of the whole Cabinet before dawn!"

"Yes; two fields away—good grassland—you can ride—there is a country road which intersects the main road two miles from here; but you must ride like the very devil!"

With lamp alight he swept across the first field—good; the gate was open. The gate to the road was shut—cruel delay, with the fate of a nation hanging on the chance of a minute!

Again he swung into the saddle, and, thank God, the searchlight beam of his lamp showed, straight and fair, a smooth, though grass-grown, lane. Wide went the throttle, and, ah! how he would have liked to open the muffler too. Thirty, forty, fifty miles an hour. The road swung gently away to the left. Now it swung back again, and there, abreast of him, through the trees and across the fields, he could see