atisfied with his fire. The dry twigs he
kept feeding to it flared up and were gone. The Innocents huddled
together, closer and closer to the coals. Father gave little pats to her
shoulder while she shivered and began to look anxious.

"Cold, old honey?"

"Yes, but it don't matter," she declared.

"Come on, I guess we'd better go look for a place to sleep. I'm
afraid--don't know as I could keep this fire up all night, after all."

"Oh, I can't walk any. Oh, I guess it will be all right when I get going
again." She tried to smile at him, and with the slowness of pain she
reached for her bundle.

He snatched it from her. "I can carry all our stuff, anyway," he said.

Leaning on him, moving step by step, every step an agony of soreness and
cold, lifting her feet each time by a separate effort of her numbed
will, she plodded beside him, while he tried to aid her with a hand
under her elbow.

"There! There's where we'll go!" he whispered, as the shapes of
farm-buildings lifted against the sky. "We won't ask permission. We
mightn't get it! Like that last farmer. And I won't let you go one step
farther. We'll butt right into the barn and sleep in the hay."

"But--do you--think we'd better?"

"We will!"

The mouse-like Father was a very lion, emboldened by his care for her.
He would have faced ten farmers terrible with shot-guns. Without one
timorous glance he led her to the small side-door of the barn, eased
down the latch, lifted her over the sill, closed the door. In the barn
was a great blackness, but also a great content. It seemed warm, and was
intimate with the scent of cows and hay, alive with the quiet breathing
of animals. Father lit a match and located the stairs to the haymow.

Mother was staggering. With his arm about her waist, very tender and
reverent, he guided her to the stairs and up them, step by agonized
step, to the fragrant peace of the haymow. She sank down and he covered
her so deep with hay that only her face was left uncovered.

"Warm, Mother?"

She did not answer. She was already asleep.

Through a night haunted by vague monsters of darkness--and by sneezes
whenever spears of hay invaded his indignant city nose--Father turned
and thrashed. But he was warm, and he did sleep for hours at a time. At
what must have been dawn he heard the farmer at the stalls in the stable
below. He felt refreshed, cozily drowsy, and he did a shameless thing, a
trick of vagrants and road-wallopers: he put