aid, holding the cup to his lips.

He opened his lips eagerly and then remembered and drew back:

"No," he said, drawing away, "I forgot, I haven't any money. We're all
dead broke!" He tried to pull himself together and look like a man.

But the coffee cup came close to his lips again and the rough motherly
hand stole about his shoulders to support him:

"That's all right!" she said in a low, matter-of-fact tone. "You don't
need money here, son, you've got home, and I'm your mother to-night. Just
drink this and then come in there behind those boxes and lie down on my
bed and get a wink of sleep. You'll be yourself again in a little while.
That's it, son! You've hiked a long way. Now forget it and take comfort."

So she soothed him till he surely must be dreaming again, and wondered
which was real, or if perhaps he had a fever and hallucinations. He
reached a furtive hand and felt of the pine table, and the chair on which
he sat to make sure that he was awake, and then he looked into her kind
gray eyes and smiled.

She led him into the little improvised room behind the counter and tucked
him up on her cot with a big warm blanket.

"That's all right now, son," she whispered, "don't you stir till you feel
like it. I'll look after you and your friend will let you know if there
is any call for you. Just you rest."

He thanked her with his eyes, too weary to speak a word, and so he
dropped into a blessed sleep.

When he awakened slowly to consciousness again there was a smell in the
air of more coffee, delicious coffee. He wondered if it was the same cup,
and this only another brief phase of his own peculiar state. Perhaps he
had not been asleep at all, but had only closed his eyes and opened them
again. But no, it was night, and there were candles lit beyond the
barricade of boxes. He could see their flicker through the cracks, and
shadows were falling here and there grotesquely on the bit of canvas that
formed another wall. There was some other odor on the air, too. He
sniffed delightedly like a little child, something sweet and alluring,
reminding one of the days when mother took the gingerbread and pies out
of the oven. No--doughnuts, that was it! Doughnuts! Not doughnuts just
behind the trenches! How could that be?

He stirred and raised up on one elbow to look about him.

There were two other cots in the room, arranged neatly with folded
blankets. A box in between held a few simple toilet articles, a tin basi