Down along the marching line of soldiers the order was repeated. Planet heard it and fell out with alacrity. He heard himself detailed for temporary duty with a corporal's guard to unload automobile trucks. A troop train rushed by and a waiting passenger train pulled slowly out from a siding. Planet glanced up. From the window of the latter train a face looked forth--a hand waved. Was he dreaming? Surely that was his mother's face he had seen! He dashed forward. The face was very distinct now. Impulsively he laid his finger across his lips as his mother had been wont to do when, as a child, she had desired him to remain silent. If the face at the window was that of his mother they must be discreet or she would never be permitted to join him. "My mother was on that train," he confided to the soldier beside him. The man laughed. "Impossible," he exclaimed. "You have seen a vision." But Paul Planet had not seen a vision. Two miles further on, when the train had come to a halt at the little village station, Mme. Planet almost pulled her protesting mother of seventy down the steps. The guards also protested. "Your passports, madame? Where are your passports?" they asked. "My passports?" she repeated. "Oh, monsieur, I am so excited I do not know. There are passports there--papers--anything you want--in that bag." Madame was so charming--the name of Planet was so well known--that the bag remained at the station, unopened, and the clever French-American mother hurried off in search of her supposed friends. She found them down along the railroad. A little squad of uniformed men unloading automobile trucks. "Vive la France!" she cried. "Vive la France!" and all the while her brown eyes were gazing hungrily, eagerly into the equally brown orbs of her son. It would not do to single him out from the others. To do so might result in difficulties for him and for her. The two hours' rest was lengthened to six. Still the detachment waited by the roadside. Still madame and her mother waited. Again the former's ready wit came to their aid. Madame was so distressed! The friends she had expected to find in the village had gone away. There was no place for herself and her mother to dine. Would the soldiers be so kind--so generous---- The soldiers would. They hospitably provided a tent for madame and her mother. It might be two days, the officers told them, before another passenger train stopped at that station. Madame, overjoyed, resigned herself to Providence and basked in the sunshine of her son's presence. The ban of secrecy had been lifted now. Their relationship was made known and pocket kodaks drafted into service as the troops were breaking camp. "I will have the pictures developed when I reach Paris," said madame as she once more clasped her boy in her arms. "I have seen you again and I am content. That two hours' respite by the roadside that resolved itself into a two days' encampment was a special dispensation of Providence."