His stomach felt light, his heart heavy, and his limbs appeared to be weighted with lead.  Coming to a spot where trees grew by the roadside he halted and stretched himself on the grass to rest.

He was no longer sleepy, but so tired.  He felt that he was going to be ill.

The thought terrified him.  Sick out here on the highway, only a few cents in his pockets, and not a friend anywhere about!

It was growing hot and he was getting hungry.  His breakfast had been a very light one.  The last regular meal he had eaten was on the Chicago Limited.  How long ago that seemed now!

He took out his money and counted it over.  There was but sixteen cents left.  He felt that he could eat that much worth for his very next meal.

There seemed to be no way out of it but to telegraph home, and he had better do it, he decided, before he was too ill to attend to it.

But there was no place now from which to send a message.  He must keep on till he came to the next town.

He rose to his feet and had taken but a few steps when some one came up from behind and touched him on the shoulder.

He turned quickly, in fear of another tramp.  It was a tramp truly, but a mere boy, not much older than himself.  He was very pale and sickly looking, his clothes were torn in two or three places and his shoes were worn clear down to the uppers.

He did not speak.  He stood there looking at Rex, amazement depicted in his gaze.

“I—­ I made a mistake,” he stammered out at last “I thought you were one of us.  I saw you lying down there under the tree.  Your shoes were all dusty.  I knew you’d been tramping.”

But Rex did not feel astonished.  He felt so ill and faint that his head swam, and he began to totter.

“I’ll have to lie down again, I guess,” he said weakly.

He had just time to move aside out of the dust when he fell like a log.

“What’s the matter?  Are you sick?”

The shabby looking youth had dropped to one knee beside Rex and was looking down at him with pitying eyes.

“Yes,” was all Rex had strength to murmur.

Then he closed his eyes and did not care what became of him.  The strange lad let his other knee sink to the earth and remained in this attitude for several minutes, gazing earnestly at Rex.

“Poor chap,” he muttered.  “I can’t make out what he’s doing tramping the country this way.  He don’t look poor.  What’ll I do with him?”

The first thing to be done, evidently, was to get him out of the sun, which beat down on the spot where he had fallen with fierce intensity.

The stranger bent over, and exerting all his strength lifted Rex in his arms and bore him back along the road to the grassy strip under the trees where he had recently been lying.

Rex opened his eyes for an instant when he felt himself raised from the ground.  Then, when he saw the pity in the plain face looking down into his, he closed them again with a little sigh.