A half-hour later he came back. She was asleep. Her hat had fallen to the floor, and he carefully placed it in the rack overhead. Her features in repose appeared almost angelic, despite the fact that the cinders had drifted in at the window and lay on the young cheeks beneath the fallen lashes. "Poor little rat!" he said to himself. "You are in bad hands, Sis, but maybe no worse off than you were." He recalled Eperson's studied courtesy and attention to Martha Jane and wondered if, after all, Eperson were becoming his absent instructor. He sat down in the seat across the aisle from Dora and looked out at the window. The coming dawn was lighting the fields through which the train was scurrying like a monster of fire and smoke. The eastern sky was slowly filling with liquid gold. Dora slept till the sun was well up. Then she stirred and waked. He saw her glance around the car in amazement and then she saw him, smiled sheepishly, and flushed a little. "I was dreaming," she said. "I thought I was flying away up in the air and that I never would light." "We are going to have some breakfast in a little while," he informed her. "There is a dining-car on this train, and I'll order something brought to us here. A little table fits in here under the window. Come on, I'll show you where to wash your hands and face." He led her to the ladies' lavatory, taught her how to supply the basin with water. He got a towel from an overhead rack, showed her a brush and comb that were for the use of passengers, and left her to make her toilet. She came back to him presently, looking brighter and better, and they sat side by side till a negro porter in a white uniform came with the table and their breakfast. It had an inviting look--the fruit, the fried eggs, the thin-sliced bacon, the hot, brown cakes, dainty toast, and aromatic coffee, and the child partook of them with unusual relish. John watched her with strange, new interest. It was a sudden reversal of a habitual situation. She had waited on him. He was now doing the same for her, and the performance seemed to hold in abeyance a full realization of the tragedy in his life. It may have been autosuggestion, induced by the child's great need of him, but whatever it was was vaguely soothing. He found himself with his young back to a wall of miserable fact, valiantly fighting off constantly increeping and maddening memories which threatened to unman him. Later that afternoon they reached Bristol, and, as Dora looked weary, John decided to go to a hotel for the night. There was one near the station, and to it they went and secured adjoining rooms. While he was making the arrangements in the office Dora waited for him in the great, barren-looking parlor, the scant furniture of which was upholstered in dark-green plush, and when he came for her she was standing at a window, looking out. The sight of her worried him, for she seemed homesick and drooped like a storm-tossed bird.