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 basin and a bucket of water. He eyed them greedily. When had he had a good wash. What luxury! He dropped back on the cot and all at once became aware that there were strange sounds in the air above the building in which he lay, strange and deep, yet regular and with a certain booming monotony as if they had been going on a long time, and he had been too preoccupied to take notice of them. A queer frenzy seized his heart. This, then, was the sound of battle in the distance! He was here at the front at last! And that was the sound of enemy shells! How strange it seemed! How it gripped the soul with the audacity of it all! How terrible, and yet how exciting to be here at last! And yet he had an unready feeling. Something was still undone to prepare him for this ordeal. It was his subconscious self that was crying out for God. His material self had sensed the doughnuts that were frying so near to him, and he looked up eagerly to welcome whoever was coming tiptoing in to see if he was awake, with a nice hot plate of them for him to eat!