The young father stood in line at the layby counter, wearing dirty clothes and worn-out boots. With him were three small children.



He asked to pay something on his bill because he knew he wouldn't be able to afford it all before Christmas. Then a mysterious woman stepped up to the counter.



"She told him, 'No, I'm paying for it,'" recalled Edna Deppe, assistant manager at the store in Indianapolis. "He just stood there and looked at her and then looked at me and asked if it was a joke. I told him it wasn't, and that she was going to pay for him. And he just busted out in tears."



At Kmart stores across the US, Santa seems to be getting some help: Anonymous donors are paying off strangers' laybyaccounts, buying the Christmas gifts other families couldn't afford, especially toys and children's clothes set aside by impoverished parents.



Before she left the store Tuesday evening (Wednesday, NZ time), the Indianapolis woman in her mid-40s had paid the layby orders for as many as 50 people. On the way out, she handed out US$50 bills and paid for two carts of toys for a woman in line at the cash register.



"She was doing it in the memory of her husband who had just died, and she said she wasn't going to be able to spend it and wanted to make people happy with it," Deppe said. The woman did not identify herself and only asked people to "remember Ben," an apparent reference to her husband.



Deepe, who said she's worked