but to her anxiety it was a mountain up which she--not the engine, but
herself--pulled this bulky mass, till she had reached the top, and was
safe again--for a second. Still there was no visible end of the mud.

In alarm she thought, "How long does it last? I can't keep this up.
I--Oh!"

The guiding tread of the previous car was suddenly lost in a mass of
heaving, bubble-scattered mud, like a batter of black dough. She fairly
picked up the car, and flung it into that welter, through it, and back
into the reappearing swastika-marked trail.

Her father spoke: "You're biting your lips. They'll bleed, if you don't
look out. Better stop and rest."

"Can't! No bottom to this mud. Once stop and lose momentum--stuck for
keeps!"

She had ten more minutes of it before she reached a combination of
bridge and culvert, with a plank platform above a big tile drain. With
this solid plank bottom, she could stop. Silence came roaring down as
she turned the switch. The bubbling water in the radiator steamed about
the cap. Claire was conscious of tautness of the cords of her neck in
front; of a pain at the base of her brain. Her father glanced at her
curiously. "I must be a wreck. I'm sure my hair is frightful," she
thought, but forgot it as she looked at him. His face was unusually
pale. In the tumult of activity he had been betrayed into letting the
old despondent look blur his eyes and sag his mouth. "Must get on," she
determined.

Claire was dainty of habit. She detested untwisted hair, ripped gloves,
muddy shoes. Hesitant as a cat by a puddle, she stepped down on the
bridge. Even on these planks, the mud was three inches thick. It
squidged about her low, spatted shoes. "Eeh!" she squeaked.

She tiptoed to the tool-box and took out a folding canvas bucket. She
edged down to the trickling stream below. She was miserably conscious of
a pastoral scene all gone to mildew--cows beneath willows by the creek,
milkweeds dripping, dried mullein weed stalks no longer dry. The bank of
the stream was so slippery that she shot down two feet, and nearly went
sprawling. Her knee did touch the bank, and the skirt of her gray
sports-suit showed a smear of yellow earth.

In less than two miles the racing motor had used up so much water that
she had to make four trips to the creek before she had filled the
radiator. When she had climbed back on the running-board she glared down
at spats and shoes turned into gray lumps. She was not tearful. Sh