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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 44185 ***
+
+                         THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS
+
+
+
+
+                              _STORIES BY_
+
+                                _Captain
+                      Theodore Goodridge Roberts_
+
+
+                _Comrades of the Trails_             _$1.50_
+                _The Red Feathers_                    _1.65_
+                _Flying Plover_                       _1.35_
+                _The Fighting Starkleys_              _1.65_
+
+
+                           _THE PAGE COMPANY_
+                   _53 Beacon Street, Boston, Mass._
+
+
+
+
+       [Illustration: "HE SAW HIS BOMB BURST BESIDE THE STUMP OF
+                      CHIMNEY."                    (_See page 194_)]
+
+
+
+
+                             _The_ FIGHTING
+                               STARKLEYS
+
+                       _Or, THE TEST OF COURAGE_
+
+                                   BY
+                   CAPTAIN THEODORE GOODRIDGE ROBERTS
+                               Author of
+    "Comrades of the Trails," "Red Feathers," "Flying Plover," etc.
+
+                             ILLUSTRATED BY
+                             GEORGE VARIAN
+
+                             [Illustration]
+
+                                 BOSTON
+                            THE PAGE COMPANY
+                               MDCCCCXXII
+
+
+
+
+                           _Copyright, 1920_,
+                         BY PERRY MASON COMPANY
+
+                           _Copyright, 1922_,
+                          BY THE PAGE COMPANY
+
+                         _All rights reserved_
+
+
+                             Made in U.S.A.
+
+                     First Impression, April, 1922
+
+
+                    PRINTED BY C. H. SIMONDS COMPANY
+                         BOSTON, MASS., U.S.A.
+
+
+
+
+                                CONTENTS
+
+
+        CHAPTER                                                 PAGE
+
+           I. THE CALL COMES TO BEAVER DAM                         1
+
+          II. JIM HAMMOND DOES NOT RETURN TO DUTY                 29
+
+         III. THE VETERANS OF OTHER DAYS                          56
+
+          IV.  PRIVATE SILL ACTS                                  80
+
+           V. PETER'S ROOM IS AGAIN OCCUPIED                     109
+
+          VI. DAVE HAMMER GETS HIS COMMISSION                    131
+
+         VII. PETER WRITES A LETTER                              155
+
+        VIII. THE 26TH "MOPS UP"                                 178
+
+          IX. FRANK SACOBIE OBJECTS                              203
+
+           X. DICK OBLIGES HIS FRIEND                            225
+
+
+
+
+                         LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+                                               PAGE
+
+        "HE SAW HIS BOMB BURST BESIDE THE STUMP
+          OF CHIMNEY" (_See page 194_)            _Frontispiece_
+
+        "'I CAN'T MAKE YOU OUT,' SAID THE SERGEANT"           23
+
+        "'I'M HIT, BOYS!' HE SAID"                            50
+
+        "'HERE'S ONE OF THEM, SIR; AND THERE'S
+          MORE COMING,' SAID THE MAN OF MUD"                 150
+
+        "STANDING IN THE DOORWAY OF THE COMPARTMENT,
+          DICK SALUTED"                                      240
+
+
+
+
+                        =The Fighting Starkleys=
+
+
+                               CHAPTER I
+
+                      THE CALL COMES TO BEAVER DAM
+
+
+BEAVER DAM was a farm; but long before the day of John Starkley and his
+wife, Constance Emma, who lived there with their five children, the name
+had been applied to and accepted by a whole settlement of farms, a
+gristmill, a meetinghouse, a school and a general store. John Starkley
+was a farmer, with no other source of income than his wide fields.
+Considering those facts, it is not to be wondered at that his three boys
+and two girls had been bred to an active, early-rising, robust way of
+life from their early childhood.
+
+The original human habitation of Beaver Dam had been built of pine logs
+by John's grandfather, one Maj. Richard Starkley, and his friend and
+henchman, Two-Blanket Sacobie, a Malecite sportsman from the big river.
+The present house had been built only a few years before the major's
+death, by his sons, Peter and Richard, and a son of old Two-Blanket, of
+hand-hewn timbers, whipsawn boards and planks and hand-split shingles.
+But the older house still stands solid and true and weather-tight on its
+original ground; its lower floor is a tool house and general lumber room
+and its upper floor a granary.
+
+Soon after the completion of the new house the major's son Richard left
+Beaver Dam for the town of St. John, where he found employment with a
+firm of merchants trading to London, Spain and the West Indies. He was
+sent to Jamaica; and from that tropic isle he sent home, at one time and
+another, cases of guava jelly and "hot stuff," a sawfish's saw and half
+a dozen letters. From Jamaica he was promoted to London; and as the
+years passed, his letters became less and less frequent until they at
+last ceased entirely. So much for the major's son Richard.
+
+Peter stuck to the farm. He was a big, kind-hearted, quiet fellow, a
+hard worker, a great reader of his father's few books. He married the
+beautiful daughter of a Scotchman who had recently settled at Green
+Hill--a Scotchman with a red beard, a pedigree longer and a deal more
+twisted than the road to Fredericton, a mastery of the bagpipes, two
+hundred acres of wild land and an empty sporran. Of Peter Starkley and
+his beautiful wife, Flora, came John, who had his father's steadfastness
+and his mother's fire. He went farther afield for his wife than his
+father had gone--out to the big river, St. John, and down it many miles
+to the sleepy old village and elm-shaded meadows of Gagetown. It was a
+long way for a busy young farmer to go courting; but Constance Emma
+Garden was worth a thousand longer journeys.
+
+When Henry, the oldest of the five Starkley children, went to college to
+study civil engineering, sixteen-year-old Peter, fourteen-year-old
+Flora, twelve-year-old Dick and eight-year-old Emma were at home. Peter,
+who was done with school, did a man's work on the farm; he owned a
+sorrel mare with a reputation as a trotter, contemplated spending the
+next winter in the lumber woods and planned agriculture activities on a
+scale and of a kind to astonish his father.
+
+On a Saturday morning in June Dick and Flora, who were chums, got up
+even earlier than usual. They breakfasted by themselves in the summer
+kitchen of the silent house, dug earthworms in the rich brown loam of
+the garden and, taking their fishing rods from behind the door of the
+tool house, set out hurriedly for Frying Pan River. When they were
+halfway to the secluded stream they overtook Frank Sacobie, the
+great-grandson of Two-Blanket Sacobie, who had helped Maj. Richard
+Starkley build his house.
+
+The young Malecite's black eyes lighted pleasantly at sight of his
+friends, but his lips remained unsmiling. He was a very thin,
+small-boned, long-legged boy of thirteen, clothed in a checked cotton
+shirt and the cut-down trousers of an older Sacobie. He did not wear a
+hat. His straight black hair lay in a fringe just above his eyebrows.
+
+"Didn't you bring any worms?" asked Flora.
+
+"Nope," said Frank.
+
+"Or any luncheon?" asked Dick.
+
+"Nope," said Frank. "You two always fetch plenty worms and plenty grub."
+
+He led the way along a lumbermen's winter road, and at last they reached
+the Frying Pan. Baiting their hooks, they fell to fishing.
+
+The trout were plentiful in the Frying Pan; they bit, they yanked, they
+pulled. The three young fishers heaved them ashore by main force and
+awkwardness--as folk say round Beaver Dam--and by noon the three had as
+many fish as they could comfortably carry. So, winding up their lines,
+they washed their hands and sat down in a sunny place to lunch. All were
+wet, for all had fallen into the river more than once. Dick had his left
+hand in a bandage by that time; he had embedded a hook in the fleshy
+part of it and had dug it out with his jack-knife.
+
+"That's nothing! Just a scratch!" he said in the best offhand military
+manner. "My great-grandfather once had a Russian bayonet put clean
+through his shoulder."
+
+"Guess my great-gran'father did some fightin', too," remarked Frank
+Sacobie. "He was a big chief on the big river."
+
+"No, he didn't," said Dick. "He was a chief, all right; but there wasn't
+any fighting on the river in his day. He was Two-Blanket Sacobie. I've
+read all about him in my great-grandfather's diary."
+
+"Don't mean him," said Frank. "I mean Two-Blanket's father's father's
+father. His name was just Sacobie, and his mark was a red canoe. He
+fought the English and the Mohawks. All the Malecites on the big river
+were his people, and he was very good friend to the big French
+governors. The King of France sent him a big medal. My gran'mother told
+me all about it once. She said how Two-Blanket got his name because he
+sold that medal to a white man on the Oromocto for two blankets; and
+that was a long time ago--way back before your great-gran'father ever
+come to this country. I tell you, if I want to be a soldier, I bet I
+would make as good a soldier as Dick."
+
+"Bet you wouldn't," retorted Dick.
+
+"All right. I'm goin' to be a soldier--and you'll see. I'm going into
+the militia as soon as I'm old enough."
+
+"So'm I."
+
+Flora laughed. "Who will you fight with you when you are in the
+militia?" she asked.
+
+The boys exchanged embarrassed glances.
+
+"I guess the militia could fight all right if it had to," said Dick.
+
+"Of course it could," said Frank.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+For four years after the conversation that took place on the bank of
+Frying Pan River Flora and Dick and the rest of the Starkley family
+except Henry lived on in the quiet way of the folk at Beaver Dam. The
+younger children continued to go daily to school at the Crossroads, to
+take part in the lighter tasks of farm and house, to play and fish and
+argue and dream great things of the future.
+
+Peter spent each winter in the lumber woods. In his nineteenth year he
+invested his savings in a deserted farm near Beaver Dam and passed the
+greater part of the summer of 1913 in repairing the old barn on his new
+possession, cutting bushes out of the old meadows, mending fences and
+clearing land.
+
+That was only a beginning he said. He would own a thousand acres before
+long and show the people of Beaver Dam--including his own father--how to
+farm on a big scale and in an up-to-date manner.
+
+Henry, the eldest Starkley of this generation, had completed his course
+at college and got a job with a railway survey party in the upper valley
+of the big river. He proved himself to be a good engineer.
+
+In the spring of 1914 Frank Sacobie, now seventeen years of age, left
+Beaver Dam to work in a sawmill on the big river. Peter Starkley
+invested his winter's wages in another mare, two cows and a ton of
+chemical fertilizers. He ploughed ten acres of his meadows and sowed
+five with oats, four to buckwheat, and planted one to potatoes. The
+whole family was thrilled with the romance of his undertaking. His
+father helped him to put in his crop; and Dick and Flora found the
+attractions of Peter's farm irresistible. The very tasks that they
+classed as work at home they considered as play when performed at
+"Peter's place." In the romantic glow of Peter's agricultural beginning
+Dick almost resigned his military ambitions. But those ambitions were
+revived by Peter himself; and this is how it happened.
+
+Peter planned to raise horses, and he felt that the question what class
+of horse to devote his energies to was very important. One day late in
+June he met a stranger in the village of Stanley, and they "talked
+horse." The stranger advised Peter to visit King's County if he wanted
+knowledge on that subject.
+
+"Enlist in the cavalry," he said--"the 8th, Princess Louise, New
+Brunswick Hussars. That will give you a trip for nothin'--two weeks--and
+a dollar a day--and a chance to see every sort of horse that was ever
+bred in this province, right there in the regiment. Bring along a horse
+of your own, and the government will pay you another dollar a day for
+it--and feed it. I do it every year, just for a holiday and a bit of
+change."
+
+It sounded attractive to Peter, and two weeks later he and his black
+mare set off for King's County to join the regiment in its training
+camp. In his absence Dick and Flora looked after the sorrel mare, his
+cows and his farm. Two weeks later Peter and the mare returned; the mare
+was a little thinner than of old, and Peter was full of talk of horses
+and soldiering. Dick's military ambitions relit in him like an explosion
+of gunpowder.
+
+Then came word of the war to Beaver Dam.
+
+The folk of Beaver Dam, and of thousands of other rural communities,
+were busy with their haying when Canada offered a division to the mother
+country, for service in any part of the world. Militia officers posted
+through the country, seeking volunteers to cross the ocean and to bear
+arms against terrific Germany.
+
+Peter, now in his twentieth year, wished to join.
+
+"And what about your new farm and all your great plans?" asked John
+Starkley.
+
+"Dick and I will look after his farm for him," said Flora. "We can
+harvest his crops and--"
+
+Just then she looked at her mother and suddenly became silent. Mrs.
+Starkley's face was very white.
+
+"If the need for men from Canada is great, other divisions will be
+called for," said the father. "At present, only one division has been
+asked for--and I think that can easily be filled with seasoned
+militiamen."
+
+"Some one drove past the window!" exclaimed Flora.
+
+The door opened and a young man, in the khaki service uniform of an
+officer, entered the room. He halted, removed his cap and grinned
+broadly at the astonished family.
+
+"Henry!" cried Mrs. Starkley, pressing a hand swiftly and covertly to
+her side.
+
+Her husband found nothing to say just then. Dick and Flora and Emma ran
+to Henry and began asking questions and examining and fingering his
+belt, the leather strapping of his smart riding breeches, even his high,
+brown boots and shining spurs.
+
+"What are you, Henry?" asked Flora.
+
+"A sapper--an engineer."
+
+"Are you an officer?" asked Dick.
+
+"Lieutenant, 1st Field Company, Canadian Engineers--that's what I am.
+Hope you approve of my boots."
+
+"Are you going, Henry?" asked Peter, with a noticeable hitch in his
+voice and a curious expression of disappointment and relief in his eyes.
+
+"Yes, I'm to join my unit at the big mobilization camp in Quebec in ten
+days," replied Henry.
+
+John Starkley put a hand on Peter's shoulders. "Then you will wait,
+Peter," he said.
+
+"You're needed here--and we must keep you as long as we can. One at a
+time is enough."
+
+"I'll wait now, but I will go with the next lot," said Peter.
+
+Henry had nine days in which to arrange his affairs, and no affairs to
+arrange. He was in high spirits and proud of his commission, but he put
+on an old tweed suit the next morning and helped with the last of the
+haying on the home farm and on Peter's place. When the nine days were
+gone he donned his uniform again and drove away to the nearest railway
+station with his mother and father and little Emma. He wrote frequent
+entertaining letters from the big camp at Valcartier. On the 29th day of
+September he embarked at Quebec; the transports gathered in Gaspé Basin
+and were joined there by their escort of cruisers; the great fleet put
+out to sea--the greatest fleet that had ever crossed the
+Atlantic--bearing thirty-three thousand Canadian soldiers to the
+battlefields of Europe instead of the twenty thousand that had been
+originally promised.
+
+At Beaver Dam Peter worked harder than ever, but with a look in his eyes
+at times that seemed to carry beyond the job in hand. A few weeks ago he
+had experienced a pardonable glow of pride and self-satisfaction when
+people had pointed him out as the young fellow who had bought the old
+Smith place and who was going to farm in a big way; now it seemed to him
+that the only man worth pointing out was the man who had enlisted to
+fight the swarming legions of Germany.
+
+He did not invest in any more live stock that fall. He sold all of the
+oats and straw that he did not need for the wintering of his two mares
+and two cows. He did not look for a job in the lumber woods. His
+potatoes were a clean and heavy crop; and he went to Stanley to sell
+them. That was early in October.
+
+The storekeeper there was a man named Hammond, who dealt in farm produce
+on a large scale and who shipped to the cities of the province. He
+engaged to take Peter's crop at a good price, then talked about the war.
+One of his sons, a lieutenant in the militia, had sailed with the first
+contingent. They talked of that young man and Henry and others who had
+gone.
+
+"I am off with the next lot," said Peter.
+
+"That will be soon enough," said the merchant thoughtfully. "My
+daughter, Vivia, has been visiting in Fredericton, and she tells me
+there is talk of a second division already. Jim says he is going with
+the next lot, too. That will leave me without a son at all, but I
+haven't the face to try to talk him out of it."
+
+Peter accepted an invitation to have dinner with the Hammonds. He knew
+the other members of the family slightly--Mrs. Hammond, Vivia and Jim.
+Jim, who was a year or two older than Peter, was a thickset,
+dull-looking young man with a reputation as a shrewd trader. He was his
+father's chief assistant in the business. Patrick, the son who had
+sailed with the first contingent, had a reputation as a fisherman and
+hunter, which meant that he was considered as frivolous and that he had
+no standing at all as a business man. Vivia, the daughter, resembled
+Patrick rather than Jim. She was about seventeen years old. Peter, who
+had not seen her for twelve months, wondered how such a heavy duffer as
+Jim Hammond came by such a sister.
+
+During the meal Peter paid a great deal of attention to everything Vivia
+Hammond said, and Vivia did more talking than anyone else at the table;
+and yet by the time Peter was on the road for Beaver Dam he could not
+remember a dozen words of all the hundreds she had spoken. Likewise, he
+attended her with his eyes as faithfully as with his ears; and yet by
+the time he was halfway home his mind's picture of her was all gone to
+glimmering fragments. The more he concentrated his thoughts upon her the
+less clearly could he see her.
+
+He laughed at himself. He could not remember ever having been in a like
+difficulty before. Well, he could afford to laugh, for, after all, he
+lived within a reasonable distance of her and could drive over again any
+day if his defective memory troubled him seriously. And that is exactly
+what he did,--and on the very next day at that,----half believing even
+himself that he went to talk about enlisting, and the war in general,
+with her heavy brother. He did not see Jim on that occasion, and during
+a ten-minutes' interview with Vivia he did not say more than a dozen
+words.
+
+On the 4th of November Peter read in the Fredericton Harvester that
+recruiting had begun in the city of St. John for the 26th Infantry
+Battalion, a newly authorized unit for overseas service. The family
+circle at Beaver Dam sat up late that night. Peter talked excitedly, and
+the others listened in silence. Dick's eyes shone in the lamplight.
+
+Peter drove over to Stanley early the next morning and there took the
+train to Fredericton, and from Fredericton to St. John. He felt no
+military thrill. Loneliness and homesickness weighed on him
+already--loneliness for his people, for the wide home kitchen and bright
+sitting-room, for his own fields.
+
+He reached the big city by the sea after dark. The traffic of the hard
+streets, the foggy lights and the heedless, hurrying crowds of people
+added bewilderment to his loneliness. With his baggage at his feet, he
+stood in the station and gazed miserably around.
+
+Peter Starkley did not stand there unnoticed. Dozens of the people who
+pushed past him eyed him with interest and wondered what he was waiting
+for. He was so evidently not of the city. He looked at once rustic and
+distinguished. But no one spoke to him until a sergeant in a khaki
+service uniform caught sight of him.
+
+"I can't make you out," said the sergeant, stepping up to him.
+
+      [Illustration: "'I CAN'T MAKE YOU OUT,' SAID THE SERGEANT."]
+
+"I can place you," he said. "You're a sergeant."
+
+"Right," returned the other. "And you're from the country. Your big felt
+hat tells me so--and your tanned face. But I can see that you're a
+person of some importance where you come from."
+
+Peter blushed. "I am a farmer and a trooper in the 8th Hussars, and I
+have come here to enlist for overseas with the new infantry battalion,"
+he said.
+
+"That's what I hoped!" exclaimed the sergeant. "Come along with me, lad.
+You are for the 26th Canadian Overseas Infantry Battalion."
+
+The sergeant, whose name was Hammer, was a cheery, friendly fellow. He
+was also a very keen soldier and entertained a high opinion of the
+military qualities of the new battalion. On reaching the armory of the
+local militia regiment, now being used as headquarters of the new unit,
+Hammer led Peter straight to the medical officer. The doctor found
+nothing the matter with the recruit from Beaver Dam. Then Hammer paraded
+him before the adjutant. Peter answered a few questions, took a solemn
+oath and signed a paper.
+
+"Now you're a soldier, a regular soldier," said the sergeant and slapped
+him on the back. "Come along now, and in half an hour I'll have you
+fitted into a uniform as trim as my own."
+
+Within a month Peter Starkley had distinguished himself as a steady
+soldier; he had attained to the rank of lance corporal, and then of
+corporal. His steadiness was largely owing to homesickness. Of his few
+intimates the closest was Sergt. Hammer.
+
+Jim Hammond did not join the regiment until close upon Christmas. He was
+found physically fit; and, as a result of a request made by Peter to
+Hammer and by the sergeant to Lieut. Scammell, and by the lieutenant to
+the adjutant, he became a member of the same platoon as Peter. Not only
+that, he became one of Hammer's section, in which Peter was a corporal.
+
+Peter felt that he should like to be good friends with Jim Hammond, but
+he did not give a definite reason even to himself for that wish. Jim, in
+his own person, was not attractive to him. Peter felt misgivings when
+Jim, within two days of donning his uniform, began to grumble about the
+severity of the training. Three days later Dave Hammer, in his official
+capacity as a section commander, fell upon Jim Hammond in his official
+capacity as a private soldier. Reason and justice, as well as authority,
+were with the sergeant. Jim came to Peter that evening.
+
+"Look a-here, who does Dave Hammer think he is, anyhow?" he asked.
+
+"I guess he knows who he is," replied Peter.
+
+"Well, whoever he is," Hammond declared wrathfully, "I won't be bawled
+out by him. I guess I'm as good a man as he is--and better."
+
+"You'll have lots of chances, from now on, to show how good a man you
+are. Acting as you did on the route march this afternoon doesn't show
+it."
+
+Hammond's face darkened.
+
+"Is that so?" he retorted. "Well, I'll tell you now I didn't come
+soldiering to be taught my business by you or any other bushwhacker from
+Beaver Dam. You got two stripes, I see. I'd have two stars if I took to
+licking people's boots the way you do, Peter Starkley."
+
+Peter bent forward, and his lean face hardened, and his dark eyes
+glinted coldly.
+
+"I don't want to have trouble with you, Jim," he said, and his voice was
+no more than a whisper, "but it will happen if you don't look out. I
+don't lick any man's boots! If I hear another word like that out of you,
+I'll lick something--and that will be you! Do you get me?"
+
+He looked dangerous. Hammond tried to glare him down, but failed.
+Hammond's own eyes wavered. He grunted and turned away. The next morning
+he applied for a Christmas pass, which was refused on the ground that
+the men who had joined first should be the first to receive passes. He
+felt thoroughly ill-used.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER II
+
+                      JIM HAMMOND DOES NOT RETURN
+                                TO DUTY
+
+
+PETER STARKLEY got home to Beaver Dam for New Year's Day on a six days'
+pass. Jim Hammond had also tried to get a pass, but he had failed. Peter
+found his homesickness increased by those six days; but he made every
+effort to hide his emotions. He talked bravely of his duties and his
+comrades, and especially of Dave Hammer. He said nothing about Jim
+Hammond except when questioned, and then as little as possible.
+
+He polished his buttons and badges every morning and rolled his putties
+as if for parade. The smartness of his carriage gave a distinction even
+to the unlovely khaki service uniform of a British noncommissioned
+officer. He looked like a guardsman and felt like a schoolboy who
+dreaded the approaching term. He haunted the barns and stables of the
+home farm and of his own place and tramped the snow-laden woods and
+blanketed fields. In spite of his efforts to think only of the harsh and
+foreign task before him, he dreamed of clearings here and crops there.
+The keen, kindly eyes of his parents saw through to his heart.
+
+One day of the six he spent in the village of Stanley. He called first
+at Hammond's store, where he tried to give Mr. Hammond the impression
+that he had dropped in casually, but as he had nothing to sell and did
+not wish to buy anything he failed to hoodwink the storekeeper. Mr.
+Hammond was cordial, but seemed worried.
+
+He complimented Peter on his promotion and his soldierly appearance.
+
+"Glad you got home," he said. "Wish Jim could have come along with you,
+but he writes as how they won't give him a pass. Seems to me it ain't
+more than only fair to let all the boys come home for Christmas or New
+Year's."
+
+"Then there wouldn't be any one left to carry on," said Peter. "They've
+fixed it so that those who have been longest on the job get the first
+passes; but I guess every one will get home for a few days before we
+sail."
+
+"Jim says the training--the drill and all that--is mighty hard,"
+continued Mr. Hammond.
+
+"Some find it so, and some don't," replied Peter awkwardly. "I guess
+it's what you might call a matter of taste."
+
+"Like enough," said the storekeeper, scratching his chin. "It's a matter
+of taste--and not to Jim's taste, that's sure."
+
+Peter felt relieved to see that Mr. Hammond seemed to understand the
+case. He was about to elaborate on the subject of military training when
+a middle-aged man wearing a bowler hat and a fur-lined overcoat turned
+from the counter. He had a square, clean-shaven face and very bright and
+active black eyes.
+
+"Excuse me, corporal," the stranger said, "but may I horn in and inquire
+what you think of it yourself?"
+
+"You can ask if you want to, Mr. Sill," said Mr. Hammond, "but you won't
+hear any kick out of Peter Starkley, whether he likes it or not."
+
+"It's easier than working in the woods, either chopping or teaming,"
+said Peter pleasantly, "and I'll bet a dollar it is a sight easier than
+the real fighting will be."
+
+"That's the way to look at it, corporal," said the stranger. "I guess
+that in a war like this a man has to make up his mind to take the fun
+and the ferocity, the music and the mud, and the pie and the pain, just
+as they come."
+
+"I guess so," said Peter.
+
+The stranger shook his hand cordially and just before he turned away
+remarked, "Maybe you and I will meet again sooner than you expect."
+
+"Who is he, and what's he driving at?" asked Peter, when the stranger
+had left the store.
+
+"He is a Yank, and a traveler for Maddock & Co. of St. John, and his
+name is Hiram Sill--but I don't know what he is driving at any more than
+you do," replied Mr. Hammond.
+
+The storekeeper invited Peter to call round at the house and to stay to
+dinner and for as long as he liked afterwards. Peter accepted the
+invitation. The Hammond house stood beside the store, but farther back
+from the road. It was white and big, with a veranda in front of it, a
+row of leafless maples, a snowdrifted lawn and a picket fence. Vivia
+Hammond opened the door to his ring. From behind the curtain of the
+parlor window she had seen him approach.
+
+At dinner Peter talked more than was usual with him; something in the
+way the girl listened to him inspired him to conversation. At two
+o'clock he accompanied her to the river and skated with her. They had
+such parts of the river as were not drifted with snow to themselves,
+except for two little boys. The little boys, interested in Peter as a
+military man, kept them constantly in sight. Peter felt decidedly
+hostile toward those harmless boys, but he was too shy to mention it to
+Vivia. He was delighted and astonished when she turned upon them at last
+and said:
+
+"Billy Brandon, you and Jack had better take off your skates and go
+home."
+
+"I guess we got as much right as anybody on this here river," replied
+Billy Brandon, but there was a lack of conviction in his voice.
+
+"You were both in bed with grippe only last week," Vivia retorted; "but
+I'll call in at your house and ask your mother about it on my way up the
+hill."
+
+The little boys had nothing to say to that. They maintained a casual
+air, skated in circles and figures for a few minutes and then went home.
+For ten minutes after that the corporal and the girl skated in an
+electrical silence, looking everywhere except at each other. Then Peter
+ventured a slanting glance across his left shoulder at her little
+fur-cuddled face. Their eyes met.
+
+"Poor Mrs. Brandon can't manage those boys," she said. "But they are
+very good boys, really. They do everything I tell them."
+
+"Why shouldn't they? But I'm glad they're gone, anyway," he replied, in
+a voice that seemed to be tangled and strangled in the collar of his
+greatcoat.
+
+When Vivia and Peter returned to the house the eastern sky was eggshell
+green and the west, low along the black forests, as red as the draft of
+a stove. Their conversation had never fully recovered after the incident
+of the two little boys. Wonderful and amazing thoughts and emotions
+churned round in Peter's head and heart, but he did not venture to give
+voice to them. They bewildered him. He stayed to tea and at that
+comfortable meal Mr. and Mrs. Hammond did the talking. Vivia and Peter
+looked at each other only shyly as if they were afraid of what they
+might see in each other's eyes.
+
+At last Peter went to the barn and harnessed the mare. Then he returned
+to the house to say good night to the ladies. That accomplished, Vivia
+accompanied him to the front door. Beyond the front door, as a
+protection against icy winds and drifting snow, was the winter
+porch--not much bigger than a sentry box. Stepping across the threshold,
+from the warm hall into the porch, Peter turned and clutched and held
+the girl's hand across the threshold. The tumult of his heart flooded up
+and smothered the fear in his brain.
+
+"I never spent such a happy day in all my life," he said.
+
+Vivia said nothing. And then the mischief got into the elbow of the
+corporal's right arm. It twitched; and, since his right hand still
+clasped Vivia's hand, the girl was jerked, with a little skip, right out
+of the hall and into the boxlike porch.
+
+Two seconds later Peter pulled open the porch door and dashed into the
+frosty night. He jumped into the pung, and away went the mare as if
+something of her master's madness had been communicated to her. The
+corporal had kissed Vivia!
+
+Peter returned to his battalion two days later. In St. John he found
+everything much as usual. Hammer was as brisk and soldierly as ever, but
+Jim Hammond was more sulky than before. Peter considered the battalion
+with a new interest. Life, even away from Beaver Dam, seemed more worth
+while, and he went at his work with a jump. He wrote twice a week to
+Vivia, spending hours in the construction of each letter and yet always
+leaving out the things that he wanted most to write. The girl's replies
+were the results of a similar literary method.
+
+The training of the battalion went on, indoors and out, day after day.
+In March, Jim Hammond went home for six days. By that time he was known
+throughout the battalion as a confirmed sulker. The six days passed; the
+seventh day came and went without sight or news of him, and then the
+adjutant wired to Mr. Hammond. No reply came from the storekeeper.
+Lieut. Scammell questioned Peter about the family. Peter told what he
+knew--that the Hammonds were fine people, that one son was an officer
+already in England, and that the father was an honest and patriotic
+citizen. So another wire was sent from the orderly room. That, like the
+first, failed to produce results.
+
+The adjutant, Capt. Long, then sent for Peter. This officer was not much
+more than five feet high, despite the name of his fathers, and was built
+in proportion. It tickled the humor of the men to see such a little
+fellow chase ten hundred bigger fellows round from morning until night.
+
+"You are to go upriver and find out why Private Hammond has not returned
+to duty," said the captain.
+
+"Yes, sir," said Peter.
+
+"Inform me by wire," continued the captain. "Use your brains. I am
+sending you alone, because I want to give Hammond a chance for the sake
+of his brother overseas. Here are your pass, your railway warrant and a
+chit for the paymaster. That's all, Corp. Starkley."
+
+Peter saluted and retired. He reached Fredericton that night and the
+home village of Jim Hammond by noon of the next day. He went straight to
+the store, where Mr. Hammond greeted him with astonishment. Peter saw no
+sign of Jim.
+
+"I didn't expect to see you back so soon," said Mr. Hammond.
+
+"I got a chance, so I took it," replied Peter. "How's all the family?"
+
+The storekeeper smiled. "The womenfolk are well," he said.
+
+Peter saw that he had come suddenly to the point where he must exercise
+all the tact he possessed. He felt keenly embarrassed.
+
+"Did you get a telegram?" he asked.
+
+"No. Did you wire us you were coming?"
+
+"Not that, exactly. You see, it was like this, Mr. Hammond: when Jim
+didn't get back the day he was due the adjutant sent you a wire, and
+when he didn't get an answer he sent another--and when you didn't reply
+to that he detailed me to come along and see what was wrong."
+
+The storekeeper stared at him. "I never got any telegram. Jim came home
+on two weeks' furlough, and he has five days of it left. You and your
+adjutant must be crazy."
+
+"Two weeks," repeated Peter. "It was six days he got."
+
+"Six days! Are you sure of that, Peter Starkley?"
+
+"As sure as that's my name, Mr. Hammond. And the adjutant sent you two
+telegrams, asking why Jim didn't return to duty when his pass was
+up--and he didn't get any answer. If you didn't get one or other of
+those telegrams, then there is something wrong somewhere."
+
+Mr. Hammond's face clouded. "I didn't get any wire, Peter--and Jim went
+away day before yesterday, to visit some friends," he said.
+
+They eyed each other in silence for a little while; both were bitterly
+embarrassed, and the storekeeper was numbed with shame.
+
+"I'll go for him," he said. "If I fetch him to you here, will you
+promise to--to keep the truth of it quiet, Peter--from his mother and
+sister and the folk about here?"
+
+"I'll do the best I can," promised the corporal, "but not for Jim's
+sake, mind you, Mr. Hammond. Capt. Long is for giving him a chance
+because of his brother, Pat, over on Salisbury Plain--and that's why he
+sent me alone, instead of sending a sergeant with an escort."
+
+"I'll go fetch him, Peter," said the other, in a shaking voice. "You go
+along to Beaver Dam and come back to-morrow--to see Vivia. When Jim and
+I turn up you meet him just like it was by chance. Keep your mouth shut,
+Peter. Not a word to a living soul about his only having six days. He's
+not well, and that's the truth."
+
+A dull anger was awake in Peter by this time.
+
+"Something the matter with his feet," he said and left the store.
+
+Here he was, told to be tactful by Capt. Long and to keep his mouth shut
+by Mr. Hammond, all on account of a sulky, lazy, bad-tempered fellow who
+had been a disgrace to the battalion since the day he joined it. And not
+a word about stopping for dinner!
+
+He crossed the road to the hotel, made arrangements to be driven out to
+Beaver Dam and then ate a lonely dinner. He thought of Vivia Hammond
+only a few yards away from him, yet unconscious of his proximity--and he
+wanted to punch the head of her brother Jim. He drove away from the
+hotel up the long hill without venturing a glance at the windows of the
+big white house on the other side of the road.
+
+The family at Beaver Dam accepted his visit without question. No mention
+was made of Jim Hammond that night. Peter was up and out early the next
+morning, lending a hand with the feeding and milking.
+
+After breakfast he and Dick went over to his own place to have a look at
+his house and barns.
+
+"Frank Sacobie came home last week," said Dick. "He's been out to see us
+twice. He wants to enlist in your outfit, but I am trying to hold him
+off till next year so's we can go over together."
+
+"You babies had better keep your bibs on a few years longer," said
+Peter. "I guess there will be lots of time for all of you to fight in
+this war without forcing yourselves under glass."
+
+They rounded a spur of spruces and saw Sacobie approaching on snowshoes
+across the white meadows. He had grown taller and deeper in the chest
+since Peter had last seen him. The greeting was cordial but not wordy.
+Sacobie turned and accompanied them.
+
+"I see Jim Hammond yesterday, out Pike Settlement way," he said.
+
+"That so?" returned Peter, trying to seem uninterested.
+
+"No uniform on, neither, and drinkin' some," continued Sacobie. "Says
+he's got his discharge from that outfit because it ain't reckoned as
+first-class and has been asked to be an officer in another outfit."
+
+Then Peter forgot his instructions. Jim Hammond too good for the 26th
+battalion! Jim Hammond offered a commission! His indignant heart sent
+his blood racing through him.
+
+"He's a liar!" he cried. "Yes, and a deserter, too, by thunder!"
+
+Dick was astonished, but Frank Sacobie received the information calmly,
+without so much as a flicker of the eyelids.
+
+"I think that all the time I listen to him," he said. "I figger to get
+his job, anyway, if he lie or tell the truth. I go down to-morrow,
+Peter, and you tell the colonel how I make a darn sight better soldier
+than Jim Hammond."
+
+Peter gripped the others each by an arm.
+
+"I shouldn't have said that," he cautioned them. "Forget it! You boys
+have got to keep it under your hats, but I guess it's up to me to take a
+jog out Pike Settlement way. If you boys say a word about it, you get in
+wrong with me and you get me in wrong with a whole heap of folks."
+
+They turned and went back to Beaver Dam. There they hitched the mares to
+the big red pung and stowed in their blankets and half a bag of oats.
+
+"I can't tell you where I'm going or what for, but only that it is a
+military duty," said Peter in answer to the questions of the family.
+
+He took Dick and Frank Sacobie with him. Once they got beyond the
+outskirts of the home settlement they found heavy sledding. At noon they
+halted, blanketed and baited the mares, boiled the kettle and lunched.
+The wide, white roadway before them, winding between walls of
+green-black spruces and gray maples, was marked with only the tracks of
+one pair of horses and one pair of sled runners--evidently made the day
+before. Peter guessed them to be those of Mr. Hammond's team, but he
+said nothing about that to his companions.
+
+Here and there they passed drifted clearings and little houses sending
+blue feathers of smoke into the bright air. They came to places where
+the team that had passed the previous day had been stuck in the drifts
+and laboriously dug out.
+
+They were within two miles of the settlement, between heavy woods
+fronted with tangled alders, when the cracking _whang!_ of exploding
+cordite sounded in the underbrush. The mares plunged, then stood. The
+reins slipped from Peter's mittened hands.
+
+"I'm hit, boys!" he said and then sagged over across Dick's knees.
+
+              [Illustration: "'I'M HIT, BOYS!' HE SAID."]
+
+They laid him on hay and horse blankets in the bottom of the pung and
+covered him with fur robes. Then Sacobie got up in front and drove.
+
+No sound except the rapping of a woodpecker came from the woods. Peter
+breathed regularly. Presently he opened his eyes.
+
+"It's in the ribs, by the feel of it--but it doesn't hurt much," he
+said. "Felt like a kick from a horse at first. Remember not to say
+anything about Jim Hammond."
+
+They put him to bed at the first farmhouse they reached. All his
+clothing on the right side was stiff with blood. Dick bandaged the
+wound; and a doctor arrived two hours later. The bullet had nipped in
+and out, splintering a rib, and lay just beneath the skin. Peter had
+bled a good deal, but not to a dangerous extent.
+
+Before sunrise the next morning Dick and Frank Sacobie set out on their
+return journey, taking with them a brief telegram and a letter for Capt.
+Long. Peter had dictated the message, but had written the letter with
+great effort, one wavery word after another.
+
+Mr. Hammond and John Starkley reached Pike Settlement late at night. The
+storekeeper seemed broken in spirit, but some color came back to his
+face when he saw Peter lying there in the bed at the farmhouse with as
+cheerful an air as if he had only strained his ankle.
+
+"I must see you a few minutes alone before I leave," he whispered,
+stooping over the bed.
+
+"Don't worry," answered Peter.
+
+John Starkley was vastly relieved to find his son doing so well. His
+bewilderment that any one in that country should pull a trigger on Peter
+almost swamped his indignation. The more he thought it over the more
+bewildered he became.
+
+"You haven't an enemy in the world, Peter--except the Germans," he said.
+"But that was no chance shot. If it had been an accident, the fellow
+with the rifle would have come out to lend a hand."
+
+"I guess that's so," replied Peter. "Maybe it was a German. It means a
+lot to the Kaiser to keep me out of this war."
+
+His father smiled. "Joking aside, lad," he said, "who do you suppose it
+was? What was the bullet? Many a murderer has been traced before now on
+a less likely clue than a bullet."
+
+"Isn't the bullet on the table there, Mr. Hammond? The doctor gave it to
+me, and I chucked it somewhere--over there or somewhere."
+
+They looked in vain for the bullet. Later, when the guests and the
+household were at supper, Mr. Hammond excused himself from table and ran
+up to Peter's room. He closed the door behind him, leaned over the bed
+and grasped Peter's left hand in both of his.
+
+"I did my best," he whispered. "I found him and told him you had been
+sent because the officer wanted to give him a chance. But he had been
+drinking heavy. He wasn't himself, Peter--he was like a madman. I begged
+him to come back with me, but he wouldn't hear reason or kindness. He
+knocked me down--me, his own father--and got away from that house. What
+are you going to do, Peter? You are a man, Starkley--a big man--big
+enough to be merciful. What d'you mean to do?"
+
+"Nothing," said Peter. "I came to find Jim, and I haven't found him. I
+got shot instead by some one I haven't seen hair, hide or track of. It's
+up to the army to find Jim, if they still want him; but as far as I am
+concerned he may be back with the battalion this minute for all I know.
+I hope he is. As for the fellow who made a target of me, well, he didn't
+kill me, and I don't hold a grudge against him."
+
+Mr. Hammond went home the first thing in the morning. John Starkley
+waited until the doctor called again and dressed the wound and said he
+had never seen any one take a splintered rib and a hole in the side so
+well as Peter.
+
+"If he keeps on like this, you'll be able to take him home in ten days
+or so," said the doctor.
+
+So John Starkley returned to Beaver Dam, delivered the good news to his
+family and heard in return that young Frank Sacobie had gone to St. John
+and joined the 26th.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER III
+
+                       THE VETERANS OF OTHER DAYS
+
+
+WHEN Peter was able to travel, he was taken home to Beaver Dam, and
+there a medical officer, a major in spurs, examined him and
+congratulated him on being alive. Peter was given six months' sick
+leave; and that, he knew, killed his chance of crossing the ocean with
+his battalion. He protested, but the officer told him that, whether in
+bed in his father's house or with his platoon, he was still in the army
+and would have to do as he was told. The officer said it kindly and
+added that as soon as he was fit he should return to his battalion,
+whether it was in Canada, England or Flanders.
+
+Jim Hammond vanished. The army marked him as a deserter, and even his
+own battalion forgot him. Confused rumors circulated round his home
+village for a little while and then faded and expired. As Jim Hammond
+vanished from the knowledge and thought of men, so vanished the
+mysterious rifleman who had splintered Peter's rib.
+
+Spring brought the great news of the stand of the First Canadian
+Division at Ypres--the stand of the few against the many, of the
+Canadian militia against the greatest and most ruthless fighting machine
+of the whole world. The German army was big and ready, but it was not
+great as we know greatness now. The little Belgians had already checked
+it and pierced the joints of its armor; the French had beaten it against
+odds; the little old army of England, with its monocles and its tea and
+its pouter-chested sergeant majors, had outshot it and outfought it at
+every meeting; and now three brigades of Canadian infantry and a few
+batteries of Canadian artillery had stood undaunted before its deluge of
+metal and strangling gas and held it back from the open road to Calais
+and Paris.
+
+Lieut. Pat Hammond wrote home about the battle. He had been in the edge
+of it and had escaped unhurt. Henry Starkley, of the First Field
+Company, was there, too. He received a slight wound. Private letters and
+the great stories of the newspapers thrilled the hearts of thousands of
+peaceful, unheroic folk. Volunteers flowed in from lumber camps and
+farms.
+
+In May Dick Starkley made the great move of his young life. He was now
+seventeen years old and sound and strong. He saw that Peter could not
+get away with his battalion--that, unless something unexpected happened,
+the Second Canadian Division would get away without a Starkley of Beaver
+Dam.
+
+So he did the unexpected thing: he went away to St. John without a word,
+introduced himself to Sgt. Dave Hammer as Peter's brother, added a year
+to his age and became a member of the 26th Battalion. He found Frank
+Sacobie there, already possessed of all the airs of an old soldier.
+
+Dick sent a telegram to his father and a long, affectionate, confused
+letter to his mother. His parents understood and forgave and went to St.
+John and told him so--and Peter sent word that he, too, understood; and
+Dick was happy. Then with all his thought and energy and ambition he set
+to work to make himself a good soldier.
+
+Peter did not grumble again about his sick leave. His wound healed; and
+as the warm days advanced he grew stronger with every day. He had been
+wounded in the performance of his duty as surely as if a German had
+fired the shot across the mud of No Man's Land; so he accepted those
+extra months in the place and life he loved with a gratitude that was
+none the less deep for being silent.
+
+In June the Battalion embarked for England, in strength eleven hundred
+noncommissioned officers and men and forty-two officers. After an
+uneventful voyage of eleven days they reached Devenport, in England, on
+the twenty-fourth day of the month. The three other battalions of the
+brigade had reached England a month before; the 26th joined them at the
+training camps in Kent and immediately set to work to learn the science
+of modern warfare. They toiled day and night with vigor and constancy;
+and before fall the battalion was declared efficient for service at the
+front.
+
+Both Dick Starkley and Frank Sacobie throve on the hard work. The
+musketry tests proved Sacobie to be one of the best five marksmen in the
+battalion. Dick was a good shot, too, but fell far below his friend at
+the longer ranges. In drill, bombing and physical training, Dick showed
+himself a more apt pupil than the Malecite. At trench digging and route
+marching there was nothing to choose between them, in spite of the fact
+that Sacobie had the advantage of a few inches in length of leg. Both
+were good soldiers, popular with their comrades and trusted by their
+officers. Both were in Dave Hammer's section and Mr. Scammell's platoon.
+
+One afternoon in August Henry Starkley turned up at Westenhanger, on
+seven days' leave from France. He looked years older than when Dick had
+last seen him and thinner of face, and on his left breast was stitched
+the ribbon of the military cross. He obtained a pass for Dick and took
+him up to London. They put up at a quiet hotel off the Strand, at which
+Henry had stopped on his frequent week-end visits to town from Salisbury
+Plain. As they were engaged in filling in the complicated and exhaustive
+registration form the hall porter gave Henry three letters and told him
+that a gentleman had called several times to see him.
+
+"What name?" asked Henry.
+
+"That he didn't tell me, sir," replied the porter, "but as it was him
+wrote the letters you have in your hand you'll soon know, sir."
+
+Henry opened one of the envelopes and turned the inclosure over in quest
+of the writer's signature. There it was--J. A. Starkley-Davenport. All
+three letters were from the same hand, penned at dates several weeks
+apart. They said that before her marriage the writer's mother had been a
+Miss Mary Starkley, daughter of a London merchant by the name of Richard
+Starkley. Richard Starkley, a colonial by birth with trade connections
+with the West Indies, had come from Beaver Dam in the province of New
+Brunswick. The letters said further that their writer had read in the
+casualty lists the name of Lieut. Henry Starkley of the Canadian
+Engineers, and that after diligent inquiry he had learned that this same
+officer had registered at the Canadian High Commissioner's office in
+October, 1914, and given his London address as the Tudor Hotel. Failing
+to obtain any further information concerning Henry Starkley, the writer
+had kept a constant eye on the Tudor Hotel. He begged Mr. Henry Starkley
+to ring up Mayfair 2607, without loss of time, should any one of these
+letters ever come to his hand.
+
+"What's his hurry, I wonder?" remarked Henry. "After three generations
+without a word I guess he'll have to wait until to-morrow morning to
+hear from the Starkleys of Beaver Dam."
+
+"Why not let him wait for three more generations?" suggested Dick. "His
+grandfather, that London merchant, soon forgot about the people back in
+the woods at Beaver Dam. Since the second battle of Ypres, this lad with
+the hitched-up-double name wants to be seen round with you, Henry."
+
+"If that's all, he does not want much," said Henry. "We'll take a look
+at him, anyway. Don't forget that the first Starkley of Beaver Dam was
+once an English soldier and that there was a first battle of Ypres
+before there was a second."
+
+The brothers, the lieutenant of engineers and the infantry private, had
+dinner at a restaurant where there were shaded candles and music; then
+they went to a theater. Although the war was now only a year old, London
+had already grown accustomed to the "gentleman ranker." Brothers,
+cousins and even sons of officers in the little old army were now
+private soldiers and noncommissioned officers in the big new army. The
+uniform was the great thing. Rank badges denoted differences of degree,
+not of kind. So Lieut. Henry Starkley and Private Dick Starkley,
+together at their little luxurious table for two and later elbow to
+elbow at the theater, did not cause comment. Immediately after breakfast
+the next morning Henry rang up the Mayfair number. A voice of inquiring
+deference, a voice that suggested great circumspection and extreme
+polish, answered him. Henry asked for Mr. Starkley-Davenport.
+
+"You want the captain, sir," corrected the voice. "Mr. David was killed
+at Ypres in '14. What name, sir?"
+
+"Starkley," replied Henry.
+
+"Of Canada, sir? Of Beaver Dam? Here is the captain, sir."
+
+Another voice sounded in Henry's ear, asking whether it was Henry
+Starkley of the sappers on the other end of the line. Henry replied in
+the affirmative.
+
+"It is Jack Davenport speaking--Starkley-Davenport," continued the
+voice. "Glad you have my letters at last. Are you at the same hotel? Can
+you wait there half an hour for me?"
+
+"I'll wait," said Henry.
+
+He and Dick awaited the arrival of the grandson of Richard Starkley with
+lively curiosity. That he was a captain, and that some one connected
+with him, perhaps a brother, had been killed at Ypres in 1914, added
+considerable interest to him in their eyes.
+
+"Size him up before trying any of your old-soldier airs on him, young
+fellow," warned Henry.
+
+They sat in the lounge of the hotel and kept a sharp watch on everyone
+who entered by the revolving doors. It was a quiet place, as hotels go
+in London, but during the half hour of their watching more people than
+the entire population of Beaver Dam were presented to their scrutiny. At
+last a pale young fellow in a Panama hat and a gray-flannel suit
+entered. Under his left shoulder was a crutch and in his right hand a
+big, rubber-shod stick. His left knee was bent, and his left foot swung
+clear of the ground. His hands were gloved in gray, and he wore a
+smoke-blue flower in his buttonhole. Only his necktie was out of tone
+with the rest of his equipment: it was in stripes of blue and red and
+yellow. Behind him, close to his elbow, came a thin, elderly man who was
+dressed in black.
+
+"Lieut. Starkley?" he inquired of the hall porter.
+
+At that Henry and Dick both sprang to their feet and went across to the
+man in gray. Before they could introduce themselves the young stranger
+edged himself against his elderly companion, thus making a prop of him,
+hooked the crook of his stick into a side pocket of his coat, and
+extended his right hand to Henry. He did it all so swiftly and smoothly
+that it almost escaped notice; and, pitiful as it was, it almost escaped
+pity.
+
+"Will you lunch with me--if you have nothing better to do?" he asked.
+"You're on leave, I know, and it sounds cheek to ask--but I want to talk
+to you about something rather important."
+
+"Of course--and here is my young brother," said Henry.
+
+The captain shook hands with Dick and then stared at him.
+
+"You are only a boy," he said; and then, seeing the blood mount to
+Dick's tanned cheeks, he continued, "and all the better for that,
+perhaps. The nippiest man in my platoon was only nineteen."
+
+"Of course you remember, sir, Mr. David had not attained his twentieth
+birthday," the elderly man in black reminded him.
+
+"You are right, Wilson," said the captain. "Hit in October, '14. He was
+my young brother. There were just the two of us. Shall we toddle along?
+I kept my taxi."
+
+Capt. J. A. Starkley-Davenport occupied three rooms and a bath in his
+own house, which was a big one in a desirable part of town. The
+remaining rooms were occupied by his servants. And such servants!
+
+The cook was so poor a performer that whenever the captain had guests
+for luncheon or dinner she sent out to a big hotel near by for the more
+important dishes--but her husband had been killed in Flanders, and her
+three sons were still in the field. Wilson, who had been Jack's father's
+color sergeant in South Africa, was the valet.
+
+The butler was a one-armed man of forty-five years who had served as a
+company sergeant major in the early days of the war; in rallying half a
+dozen survivors of his company he had got his arm in the way of a chunk
+of high-explosive shell and had decorated his chest with the
+Distinguished Conduct Medal. He had only the vaguest notions what his
+duties as butler required of him but occupied his time in arguing the
+delicate question of seniority with Wilson and the coachman and making
+frequent reports to the captain.
+
+The coachman, who had served forty years in the navy, most of the time
+as chief petty officer, claimed seniority of the butler and Wilson on
+the grounds of belonging to the senior service. But the ex-sergeants
+argued that the captain's house was as much a bit of the army as brigade
+headquarters in France, and that the polite thing for any sailorman to
+do who found a home there was to forget all about seniority; and that
+for their part they did not believe the British navy was older than the
+British army.
+
+Captain Starkley-Davenport introduced into this household his cousins
+from Beaver Dam, without apologies and with only a few words of
+explanation. In spite of the butler's protests, the valet and the
+coachman intruded themselves on the luncheon party, pretending to wait
+on table, but in reality satisfying their curiosity concerning the
+military gentlemen from Canada whose name was the front half of the
+captain's name. They paused frequently in their light duties round the
+table and frankly gave ear to the conversation. Their glances went from
+face to face with childish eagerness, intent on each speaker in turn.
+The captain did not mind, for he was accustomed to their ways and their
+devouring interest in him; Henry was puzzled at first and then amused;
+and Dick was highly flattered.
+
+"There isn't anyone of our blood in our regiment now, and that is what I
+particularly want to talk to you chaps about," said the captain, after a
+little talk on general subjects. "My father and young brother are gone,
+and the chances are that I won't get back. But the interests of the
+regiment are still mine--and I want the family to continue to have a
+stake in it. No use asking you to transfer, Henry, I can see that; you
+are a sapper and already proved in the field, and I know how sappers
+feel about their job; but Dick's an infantryman. What d'you say to
+transfer and promotion, Dick? You can get your commission in one of our
+new battalions as easy as kiss. It will help you and the old regiment."
+
+"But perhaps I shouldn't make a good officer," replied Dick. "I've never
+been in action, you know."
+
+"Don't worry about that. I'll answer for your quality. You wouldn't have
+enlisted if the right stuff wasn't in you."
+
+"But I'd like to prove it, first--although I'd like to be an officer
+mighty well. That's what I intend to be some day. I think I'll stick to
+the 26th a while. That would be fairer--and I'd feel better satisfied,
+if ever I won a commission, to have it in my own outfit. Frank Sacobie
+would feel sore if I left him, before we'd ever been in France together,
+to be an officer in another outfit. But there is Peter. He is a corporal
+already and a mighty good soldier."
+
+He told all about Peter and the queer way he was wounded back in Canada
+and then all about his friend, Frank Sacobie. The captain and the three
+attendants listened with interest. The captain asked many questions; and
+the butler, the valet and the coachman were on the point of doing the
+same many times.
+
+After luncheon Wilson, the elderly valet, took command gently but firmly
+and led the captain off to bed. The brothers left the addresses of
+themselves and Peter with the captain and promised to call at every
+opportunity and to bring Sacobie to see him at the first chance.
+
+Dick and Frank Sacobie continued their training, and in July Dick got
+his first stripe. A few members of the battalion went to the hospital,
+and a few were returned to Canada for one reason or another. In August a
+little draft of men fresh from Canada came to the battalion.
+
+One of the new men kept inquiring so persistently for Corp. Peter
+Starkley that in the course of time he was passed along to Dick, who
+told him about Peter.
+
+"I'm downright sorry to hear that," said the new arrival. "I saw him in
+Mr. Hammond's store one day and took a shine to him, but as you're his
+own brother I guess I'm in the right outfit. Hiram Sill is my name."
+
+They shook hands cordially.
+
+"I'm an American citizen and not so young as I used to be," continued
+Sill, "but the minute this war started I knew I'd be into it before
+long. Soldiering is a business now, and I am a business man. So it
+looked to me as if I were needed--as if the energy I was expending in
+selling boots and shoes for Maddock & Co. would count some if turned
+against the Kaiser. So I swore an oath to fight King George's enemies,
+and I guess I've made no mistake in that. King George and Hiram Sill see
+eye to eye and tooth to tooth in this war like two coons at a
+watermelon."
+
+In spite of the fact that Mr. Scammell's platoon was already up to
+strength, Sill worked his way into it.
+
+He had a very good reason for wanting to be in that particular platoon,
+and there were men already in it who had no particular reason for
+remaining in it instead of going to some other platoon; so--as Sill very
+justly remarked to Dick, to Sacobie, to Sergt. Hammer, to Lieut.
+Scammell and to Capt. Long--he did not see why he could not be where he
+wanted to be. Friendship for Frank Sacobie and Dick Starkley and
+admiration for Sergt. Hammer and Lieut. Scammell were the reasons he
+gave for wanting to be in that platoon.
+
+"He seems a friendly chap," said the adjutant to Mr. Scammell. "Will you
+take him? If so, you can let the Smith with the red head go over to
+Number Three, where he will be with a whole grist of lads from his own
+part of the country. What d'ye say? He looks smart and willing to me."
+
+"Sure I'll take him," said Mr. Scammell. "He says he admires me."
+
+So Hiram Sill became a member of Number Two Platoon. He worked with the
+energy of a tiger and with the good nature of a lamb. He talked a great
+deal, but always with a view to acquiring or imparting knowledge. When
+he found that his military duties and the cultivation of friendships did
+not use up all his time and energy, he set himself to the task of
+ascertaining how many Americans were enrolled in the First and Second
+Canadian divisions. Then indeed he became a busy man; and still his cry
+continued to be that soldiering was a business.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+PRIVATE SILL ACTS
+
+
+ON the night of September 15, 1915, the brigade of which the 26th
+Battalion was a unit crossed from Folkstone to Boulogne without
+accident. All the ranks were in the highest spirits, fondly imagining
+that the dull routine of training was dead forever and that the practice
+of actual warfare was as entertaining as dangerous.
+
+The brigade moved up by way of the fine old city of Saint Omer and the
+big Flemish town of Hazebrouck. By the fourth day after landing in
+France the whole brigade was established in the forward area of
+operations, along with the other brigades of the new division. On the
+night of the 19th the battalion marched up and went into hutments and
+billets close behind the Kemmel front. That night, from the hill above
+their huts, the men from New Brunswick beheld for the first time that
+fixed, fire-pulsing line beyond which lay the menace of Germany.
+
+The battalion went in under cover of darkness, and by midnight had taken
+over from the former defenders the headquarters of companies, the
+dugouts in the support trenches and the sentry posts in the fire trench.
+There were Dick Starkley and his comrades holding back the Huns from the
+throat of civilization. It was an amazing and inspiring position to be
+in for the first time. In front of them, just beneath and behind the
+soaring and falling star shells and Very lights, crouched the most
+ruthless and powerful armies of the world.
+
+To the right and left, every now and then, machine guns broke forth in
+swift, rapping fire. When the fire was from the positions opposite, the
+bullets snapped in the air like the crackings of a whip. The white stars
+went up and down. Great guns thumped occasionally; now and then a high
+shell whined overhead; now and then the burst of an exploding shell
+sounded before or behind. It was a quiet night; but to the new battalion
+it was full of thrills. The sentries never took their eyes from the
+mysterious region beyond their wire. Every blob of blackness beyond
+their defenses set their pulses racing and sent their hands to their
+weapons.
+
+Dick Starkley and Frank Sacobie stood shoulder to shoulder on the fire
+step for hours, staring with all their eyes and listening with all their
+ears. Hiram Sill sat at their feet and talked about how he felt on this
+very particular occasion. His friends paid no attention to him.
+
+"This is the proudest moment of my life," he said. "We are historic
+figures, boys--and that's a thing I never hoped to be. In my humble way,
+I stand for more than George Washington did. This is a bigger war than
+George ever dreamed of, and I have a bigger and better reason for
+fighting the Huns than Gen. Washington ever had for fighting the fool
+Britishers."
+
+"Did you see that?" asked Dick of Sacobie. "Over in the edge of their
+wire. There! Look quick now! Is it a man?"
+
+"Looks like a man, but it's been there right along and ain't moved yet,"
+said Frank. "Maybe it's a stump."
+
+Just then Lieut. Scammell came along. He got up on the fire step and,
+directed by Dick, trained his glass on the black thing in the edge of
+the enemy's wire. A German star shell gave him light.
+
+"That's a German--a dead one," he said. "I've been told about him. There
+was a bit of a scrap over there three nights ago, and that is one of the
+scrappers."
+
+Hiram forgot about Gen. Washington and mounted the fire step to have a
+look. He borrowed the officer's glass for the purpose.
+
+"Do his friends intend to leave him out there much longer, sir?" he
+asked. "If they do, it's a sure sign of weakness. They're scart."
+
+"They are scart, right enough--but I bet they wouldn't be if they knew
+this bit of trench was being held now by a green battalion," replied Mr.
+Scammell. "They'd be over for identifications if they knew."
+
+"Let them come!" exclaimed Private Sill. "I bet a dollar they wouldn't
+stay to breakfast--except a few who wouldn't want any."
+
+At that moment a rifle cracked to the right of them, evidently from
+their own trench and not more than one hundred yards away. It was
+followed close by a spatter of shots, then the smashing bursts of
+grenades, more musketry and the _rat-tat-tat_ of several machine guns.
+Bullets snapped in the air. Lights trailed up from both lines. Dull
+thumps sounded far away, and then came the whining songs of high-flying
+shells. Flashes of fire astonished the eye, and crashing reports stunned
+the ear.
+
+"They're at us!" exclaimed the lieutenant. "Open fire on the parapet
+opposite, unless you see a better target, and don't leave your posts.
+Keep low. Better use the loopholes."
+
+He left the fire step and ran along the duck boards toward the heart of
+the row.
+
+Dick and Frank Sacobie and Hiram Sill, firing rapidly through the
+loopholes, added what they could to the disturbance. Now and again a
+bullet rang against the steel plate of a loophole. One or another of
+them took frequent observations through a periscope, for at that time
+the Canadian troops were not yet supplied with shrapnel helmets. Dave
+Hammer, breathless with excitement, joined them for a few seconds.
+
+"They tried to jump us,--must have learned we're a green relief,--but
+we've chewed them up for fair!" he gasped. "Must have been near a
+hundred of 'em--but not one got through our wire. Keep yer heads down
+for a while, boys; they're traversing our top with emmagees."
+
+At last the enemy's artillery fire slackened and died. Ours drubbed away
+cheerily for another fifteen minutes, then ceased as quick and clean as
+the snap of a finger. The rifle fire and machine-gun fire dwindled and
+ceased. Even the up-spurting of the white and watchful stars diminished
+by half; but now and again one of them from the hostile lines, curving
+far forward in its downward flight, illuminated a dozen or more
+motionless black shapes in and in front of our rusty wire. Except for
+those motionless figures No Man's Land was again deserted. The big rats
+ran there undisturbed.
+
+Sacobie looked over the parapet; Hiram Sill and Dick sat on the fire
+step at the Malecite's feet. They felt as tired as if they had been
+wrestling with strong men for half an hour. Dave Hammer came along the
+trench and halted before them.
+
+"Those Huns or Fritzes or whatever you call them are crazy," he said.
+"Did you ever hear of such a fool thing as that? They've left a dozen
+dead out in front, besides what they carried home along with their
+wounded--and all they did to us was wound three of our fellows with that
+first bomb they threw, and two more with machine-gun fire."
+
+"Their officers must be boneheads, for sure," said Hiram. "War's a
+business,--and a mighty swift one,--and you can't succeed in business
+without knowing something about psychology. Yes, gentlemen, psychology,
+queer as it may sound."
+
+"Sounds mighty queer to me!" muttered Sacobie, glancing down.
+
+"You must study men," continued Private Sill, not at all abashed, "their
+souls and hearts and minds--if you want to make a success at anything
+except bee farming. Now, take this fool raid of the Huns. They were
+smart enough to find out that a bunch of greenhorns took over this
+trench to-night. So they thought they'd surprise us. Now, if they'd
+known anything about psychology, they'd have known that just because we
+were new and green we'd all be on our toes to-night, with our eyes
+sticking out a yard and our ears buttoned right back. Sure! Every man of
+us was on sentry duty to-night!"
+
+"I guess you've got the right idea, Old Psychology," said the sergeant.
+
+The 26th spent five days in the line on that tour. With the exception of
+one day and night of rain they had fine weather. They mended their wire
+and did a fair amount of business in No Man's Land. The enemy attempted
+no further raids; his last effort had evidently given him more
+information concerning the quality of the new battalion than he could
+digest in a week. At any rate he kept very quiet.
+
+At the end of the tour the battalion went back a little way to huts on
+the bushy flanks of Scherpenberg, where they "rested" by performing
+squad, platoon and company drill and innumerable fatigues. The time
+remaining at their disposal was devoted to football and base-ball and
+investigations of villages and farmsteads in the neighborhood.
+
+Their second tour in was more lively and less comfortable than the
+first. Under the drench of rain and the gnawing of dank and chilly mists
+their trenches and all the surrounding landscape were changed from dry
+earth to mud. Everything in the front line, including their persons,
+became caked with mud. The duck boards became a chain of slippery traps;
+and in low trenches they floated like rafts. The parapets slid in and
+required constant attention; and what the water left undone in the way
+of destruction the guns across the way tried to finish.
+
+It was hard on the spirit of new troops; they were toughened to severe
+work and rough living, but not to the deadening mud of a front-line
+trench in low ground. So their officers planned excitement for them, to
+keep the fire of interest alive in their hearts. That excitement was
+obtained in several ways, but always by a move of some sort against the
+enemy or his defenses. Patrol work was the most popular form of relief
+from muddy inaction. Lieut. Scammell quickly developed a skill in that
+and an appetite for it that soon drew the colonel's attention to himself
+and his followers.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+By the end of September, even the medical officers of New Brunswick had
+to admit that Corp. Peter Starkley was fully recovered from his wound.
+As for Peter himself, he affirmed that he had not felt anything of it
+for the past two months. He had worked at the haying and the harvesting
+on Beaver Dam and his own place without so much as a twinge of pain.
+
+Peter returned to his military duties eagerly, but inspired only by his
+sense of duty. His heart was more than ever in his own countryside; but
+despite his natural modesty he knew that he was useful to his king and
+country as a noncommissioned officer, and with that knowledge he
+fortified his heart. He tried to tell Vivia Hammond something of what he
+felt. His words were stumbling and inadequate, but she understood him.
+And at the last he said:
+
+"Vivia, don't forget me, for I shall be thinking of you always--more
+than of anyone or anything in the world." And then, not trusting his
+voice for more, he kissed her hastily.
+
+Vivia wept and made no attempt to hide her tears or the reason for them.
+
+Shortly before Peter's return to the army he had received a letter from
+Capt. Starkley-Davenport, telling of the reunion of the cousins in
+London and virtually offering him a commission in the writer's old
+regiment. Peter had also heard something of the plan from Dick a few
+days before. He answered the captain's letter promptly and frankly, to
+the effect that he had no military ambition beyond that of doing his
+duty to the full extent of his power against Germany, and that a
+commission in an English regiment was an honor he could accept only if
+it should come to him unavoidably, in the day's work.
+
+Peter reached England in the third week of October and with three
+hundred companions fresh from Canada was attached to a reserve battalion
+on St. Martin's Plain for duty and instruction. Peter was given the
+acting rank of sergeant. Early in December he crossed to France and
+reached his battalion without accident. He found that the 26th had
+experienced its full share of the fortunes and misfortunes of war.
+Scores of familiar faces were gone. His old platoon had suffered many
+changes since he had left it in St. John a year ago. Its commander, a
+Lieut. Smith, was an entire stranger to him, and he had known the
+platoon sergeant as a private. Mr. Scammell was now scout officer and
+expecting his third star at any moment. Dave Hammer, still a sergeant,
+and Dick, Sacobie and Hiram Sill also were scouts. Dick, was a corporal
+now and had never been touched by shot, shell or sickness. Sacobie had
+been slightly wounded and had been away at a field ambulance for a week.
+
+Peter rejoined his old platoon and, as it was largely composed at this
+time of new troops, was permitted to retain his acting rank of sergeant.
+He performed his duties so satisfactorily that he was confirmed in his
+rank after his first tour in the trenches.
+
+On the third night of Peter's second tour in the front line, Dave
+Hammer, Dick and Frank Sacobie took him out to show him about. All
+carried bombs, and Sergt. Hammer had a pistol as well. They were hoping
+to surprise a party of Germans at work mending their wire.
+
+Hammer slipped over the parapet. Peter followed him. Dick and Sacobie
+went over together, quick as the wink of an eye. Their faces and hands
+were black. With Dave Hammer in the lead, Peter at the very soles of his
+spiked boots and Dick and Sacobie elbow to elbow behind Peter, they
+crawled out through their own wire by the way of an intricate channel.
+When a star shell went up in front, near enough to light that particular
+area, they lay motionless. They went forward during the brief periods of
+darkness and half light.
+
+At last they got near enough to the German wire to see it plainly, and
+the leader changed his course to the left. When they lay perfectly still
+they could hear many faint, vague sounds in every direction: far, dull
+thuds before and behind them, spatters of rifle fire far off to the
+right and left, the bang of a Very pistol somewhere behind a parapet and
+now and then the crash of a bursting shell.
+
+A few minutes later Dave twisted about and laid a hand on Peter's
+shoulder. He gave it a gentle pull. Peter crawled up abreast of him.
+Dave put his lips to Peter's ear and whispered:
+
+"There they are."
+
+A twisty movement of his right foot had already signaled the same
+information to the veterans in the rear. Peter stared at the blotches of
+darkness that Dave had indicated. They did not move often or quickly and
+kept close to the ground. Sometimes, when a light was up, they became
+motionless and instantly melted from view, merging into the shadows of
+the night and the tangled wire. Now and then Peter heard some faint
+sound of their labor, as they worked at the wire.
+
+"Only five of them," whispered the scout sergeant. "They are scared
+blue. Bet their skunks of officers had to kick them out of the trench.
+Let's sheer off a few yards and give 'em something to be scared about."
+
+Just then Dick and Frank squirmed up beside them.
+
+"Some more straight ahead of us," breathed the Indian. "Three or four."
+
+Hammer used his glass and saw that Sacobie's eyes had not fooled him. He
+touched each of his companions to assure himself of their attention,
+then twisted sharp to the left, back toward their own line, and crawled
+away. They followed. After he had covered about ten yards, Dave turned
+end for end in his muddy trail, and the others came up to him and turned
+beside him. They saw that the wiring party and the patrol had joined.
+
+"Spread a bit," whispered Dave. "I'll chuck one at 'em, and when it
+busts you fellows let fly and then beat it back for the hole in our
+wire. Take cover if the emmagees get busy. I'll be right behind you."
+
+They moved a few paces to the right and left. Peter's lips felt dry, and
+he wanted to sneeze. He took a plump, cold, heavy little grenade in his
+muddy right hand. A few breathless, slow seconds passed and then
+_smash!_ went Dave's bomb over against the Hun wire. Then Peter stood up
+and threw--and three bombs exploded like one.
+
+Turning, Peter slithered along on all fours after Dick and Sacobie. The
+startled Huns lighted up their front as if for a national fête; but
+Peter chanced it and kept on going. A shrapnel shell exploded overhead
+with a terrific sound, and the fat bullets spattered in the mud all
+round him. He came to another and larger crater and was about to skirt
+it when a familiar voice exclaimed:
+
+"Come in here, you idiot!"
+
+There was Dick and Frank Sacobie standing hip-deep in the mud and water
+at the bottom of the hole. Peter joined them with a few bushels of mud.
+A whiz-bang whizzed and banged red near-by, and the three ducked and
+knocked their heads together. The water was bitterly cold.
+
+"Did you think you were on your way to the barns to milk?" asked Dick.
+"Don't you know the machine guns are combing the ground?"
+
+"I'll remember," said Peter. "New work to me, and I guess I was a bit
+flustered. I wonder where Dave Hammer has got himself to."
+
+"Some hole or other, sure," said Sacobie. "Don't worry 'bout Dave. He
+put three bombs into them. I counted the busts. Fritz will quiet down in
+a few minutes, I guess, and let us out of here--if our fellows don't get
+gay and start all the artillery shootin' off."
+
+Our fellows did not get gay, our artillery refrained from shooting off,
+and soon the enemy ceased his frenzied musketry and machine gunning and
+bombing of his own wire and the harmless mud beyond. So Peter and Dick
+and Sacobie left their wet retreat and crawled for home. They found
+Sergt. Hammer waiting for them at the hole in the wire. He had already
+given the word to the sentry; and so they made the passage of the wire
+and popped into the trench. Hammer reported to Mr. Scammell, who was all
+ready to go out with another patrol; and then the four went back to
+their dugout in the support trench, devoured a mess of potatoes and
+onions, drank a few mugs of tea and retired to their blankets, mud and
+putties and all.
+
+That was the night of the 3d of December. In the battalion's summary of
+intelligence to the brigade it read like this:
+
+"Night of 23d-24th, our patrols active. Small patrol of four, under
+106254 Sgt. D. Hammer, encountered ten of the enemy in front of the
+German wire. Bombs were exchanged and six of the enemy were killed or
+wounded. Our patrol returned. 2.30 A. M. Lieut. Scammell placed tube in
+hostile wire which exploded successfully. No casualties."
+
+The next day passed quietly, with a pale glimmer of sunshine now and
+then, and between glimmers a flurry of moist snow. The Germans shouted
+friendly messages across No Man's Land and suggested a complete
+cessation of hostilities for the day and the morrow. The Canadians
+replied that the next Fritz who cut any "love-your-enemy" capers on the
+parapet would get what he deserved.
+
+"Peace on earth!" exclaimed the colonel of the 26th. "They are the
+people to ask for it, the murderers! No, this is a war with a
+reason--and we shoot on Christmas Eve just as quick as on any other
+day."
+
+The day passed quietly. Soon after sunset Mr. Scammell sent two of his
+scouts out to watch the gap in the German wire that he had blown with
+his explosive tube. They returned at ten o'clock and reported that the
+enemy had made no attempt to mend the gap. The night was misty and the
+enemy's illumination a little above normal.
+
+At eleven o'clock Lieut. Scammell went out himself, accompanied by
+Lieut. Harvey and nine men. They reached the gap in the enemy wire
+without being discovered, and there they separated. Mr. Harvey and two
+others moved along the front of the wire to the left, and a sergeant and
+one man went to the right. Mr. Scammell and his five men passed through
+the wire and extended a few yards to the left, close under the hostile
+parapet.
+
+The officer stood up, close against the wet sandbags. Dave Hammer, Dick,
+Peter, Hiram Sill and Sacobie followed his example.
+
+Then, all together, they tossed six bombs into the trench. The
+shattering bangs of six more blended with the bangs of the first volley.
+From right and left along the trench sounded other explosions.
+
+Obeying their officer's instructions, Scammell's men made the return
+journey through the wire and struck out for home at top speed, trusting
+to the mist to hide their movements from the foe.
+
+Scammell rid himself of three more bombs and then followed his party.
+The white mist swallowed them. The bombers ran, stumbled and ran again,
+eager to reach the shelter of their own parapet before the shaken enemy
+should recover and begin sweeping the ground with his machine guns.
+
+Sacobie and Dick were the first to get into the trench. Then came Sergt.
+Hammer and Lieut. Scammell, followed close by Lieut. Harvey and his
+party. By that time the German machine guns were going full blast.
+
+"Are Sergt. Starkley and Private Sill here?"
+
+"Don't see either of 'em, sir," Sergt. Hammer said in reply to Mr.
+Scammell's question.
+
+"Perhaps they got here before any of us and beat it for their dugout,"
+said Mr. Scammell. "Dick, you go along the trench and have a look for
+them. If they aren't in, come back and report to me. Wait right here for
+me, mind you--on _this_ side of the parapet. Get that?"
+
+Then the officer spoke a few hurried words to Sergt. Hammer, a few to
+the sentry, and went over the sandbags like a snake. Hammer went out of
+the trench at the same moment; and Frank Sacobie took one glance at the
+sentry and followed Hammer like a shadow. The mist lay close and cold
+and almost as wet as rain over that puddled waste.
+
+Mr. Scammell found Peter and Hiram about ten yards in front of the gap
+in our wire; the private was unhurt and the sergeant unconscious. Sill
+had his tall friend on his back and was crawling laboriously homeward.
+
+"Whiz-bang," he informed Mr. Scammell. "It got Pete bad, in the leg. I
+heard him grunt and soon found him."
+
+They regained the trench, picking up Hammer on the way, and sent Peter
+out on a stretcher. Sacobie came in at their heels; and no one knew that
+he had gone out to the rescue.
+
+That happened on Christmas morning. Before night the doctors cut off
+what little had been left below the knee of Peter's right leg.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER V
+
+                     PETER'S ROOM IS AGAIN OCCUPIED
+
+
+LIFE was very dull round Beaver Dam after Peter had gone away. John and
+Constance Starkley and Flora and Emma felt that every room of the old
+house was so full of memories of the three boys that they could not
+think of anything else. John Starkley worked early and late, but a sense
+of numbness was always at his heart. There were times when he glowed
+with pride and even when he flamed with anger, but he was always
+conscious of the weight on his heart. His grief was partly for his
+wife's grief.
+
+He awoke suddenly very early one morning and heard his wife sobbing
+quietly. That had happened several times before, and sometimes she had
+been asleep and at other times awake. Now she was asleep, lonely for her
+boys even in her dreams. He thought of waking her; and then he reflected
+that, if awake, she would hide her tears, which now perhaps were giving
+her some comfort in her dreams.
+
+But he could not find his own sleep again. He lighted a candle, put on a
+few clothes and went downstairs to the sitting room. There were books
+everywhere, of all sorts, in that comfortable and shabby room. The brown
+wooden clock on the shelf above the old Franklin stove ticked drearily.
+It marked ten minutes past two. Mr. Starkley dipped into a volume of
+Charles Lever and wondered why he had ever laughed at its impossible
+anecdotes and pasteboard love scenes. He tried a report of the New
+Brunswick Agricultural Society and found that equally dry. A flyleaf of
+Treasure Island held his attention, for on it was penned in a round
+hand, "Flora with Dick's love, Christmas, 1914."
+
+"He was only a boy then," murmured the father. "Less than a year ago he
+was only a boy, and now he is a man, knowing hate and horror and
+fatigue--a man fighting for his life. They are all boys! Henry and
+Peter--Peter with his grand farm and fast mares, and his eyes like
+Connie's."
+
+John Starkley got out of his chair, trembling as if with cold. He walked
+round the room, clasping his hands before him. Then he took the candle
+from the table and held it up to the shelf above the stove. There stood
+photographs of his boys, in uniform. He held the little flame close to
+each photograph in turn.
+
+"Three sons," he said. "Three good sons--and not one here now!"
+
+A cautious rat-tat on the glass of one of the windows brought him out of
+his reveries with a start. He went to the window without a moment's
+hesitation, held the candle high and saw a face looking in at him that
+he did not recognize for a moment. It was a frightened and shamed face.
+The eyes met his for a fraction of a second and then shifted their
+glance.
+
+"James Hammond!" exclaimed Mr. Starkley. "Of all people!"
+
+He set the candle on the table and pushed up the lower sash of the
+window, letting in a gust of cold wind that extinguished the light
+behind him. He could see the bulk of his untimely visitor against the
+vague starlight.
+
+"Come in, James," he said. "By the window or the door, as you like."
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Starkley," said Hammond in guarded tones. "The window
+will do. No strangers about, I suppose? Just the family?"
+
+"Only my wife and daughters," replied the farmer, and turned to relight
+the candle.
+
+Jim Hammond got quickly across the sill, pulled the sash down, and after
+it the green-linen shade. He stood near the wall, twirling his hat in
+his hand and shuffling his feet. When Mr. Starkley turned to him, he
+swallowed hard, glanced up and then as swiftly down again.
+
+"Queer time to make a call," said Hammond at last. "Near three o'clock,
+Mr. Starkley. I was glad to see your light at the window. I was scared
+to tap on the window, at first, for fear you'd send me away."
+
+"Send you away?" queried the farmer. "Why did you fear that, Jim? You,
+or any other friend, are welcome at this house at any hour of the day or
+night. But I must admit that your visit has taken me by surprise. I
+thought you were far away from this peaceful and lonely country, my
+boy--far away in Flanders."
+
+The blood flushed over Jim's face, and he stared at the farmer.
+
+"You thought I was in Flanders," he said. "In Flanders--me! So you don't
+know about me, Mr. Starkley? Peter didn't tell you about me?
+That--that's impossible. Don't you know--and every one else?"
+
+"I don't know what you are talking about," replied Mr. Starkley, as he
+pushed Jim into an armchair. "I can see that you are tired, however, and
+in distress of some sort. Why are you here, Jim--and why are you not in
+uniform? Tell me--and if I can help you in any way you may be sure that
+I will. Rest here and I'll get you something to eat. I did not notice at
+first how bad you look, Jim."
+
+"Never mind the food!" muttered young Hammond. "I'm not hungry, sir--not
+to matter, that is. But I'm dog-tired. I've been hiding about in the
+woods and in people's barns for a long time--and walking miles and
+miles. I--you say you don't know--I am a deserter--and worse."
+
+"You didn't go to France with your regiment? You deserted?"
+
+"I didn't go anywhere with it. Why didn't Peter tell you? I came home on
+pass--and gave them the slip. I--Peter was sent here to fetch me back.
+And he didn't tell you! And you thought I was in France! I came here
+because I was ashamed to go home."
+
+He suddenly leaned forward in his chair, with his elbows on his knees,
+and covered his face with his hands. His shoulders shook. John Starkley
+continued to gaze at him in silence for a minute or two, far too amazed
+and upset and bewildered to know what to say or do. He felt a great pity
+for the young man, whom he had always known as a prosperous and
+self-confident person. To see him thus--shabby, weary, ashamed and
+reduced to tears--was a most pitiful thing. A deserter! A coward! But
+even so, who was he to judge? Might not his sons have been like this,
+except for the mercy of God? Even now any one of his boys, or all three
+of them, might be in great need of help and kindness. He went over and
+laid a hand gently on his visitor's shoulder.
+
+"I don't know what you have done, exactly, or anything at all of your
+reason for doing it, but you are the son of a friend of mine and have
+been a comrade of one of my sons," he said. "Look upon me as a friend,
+Jim. You say you are a deserter. Well, I heard you. It is bad--but here
+is my hand."
+
+Jim Hammond raised his head and looked at Mr. Starkley with a
+tear-stained face.
+
+"Do you mean that?" he asked; and at the other's nod he grasped the
+extended hand.
+
+Mr. Starkley asked him no more questions then, but brought cold ham from
+the pantry and cider from the cellar and ate and drank with him. The
+visitor's way with the food and drink told its own story and sharpened
+the farmer's pity. They went upstairs on tiptoe.
+
+"This is Peter's room," said Mr. Starkley. "Sleep sound and as long as
+you please--till dinner time, if you like. And don't worry, Jim."
+
+The farmer returned to his own room and found his wife sleeping quietly.
+He wakened her and told her of young Hammond's visit and all that he
+knew of his story.
+
+"I am glad you took him in," she said. "We must help him for our boys'
+sakes, even if he is a deserter."
+
+"Yes," answered Mr. Starkley, "we must help him through his shame and
+trouble--and then he may right the other matter of his own free will.
+We'll give him a chance, anyway."
+
+It was dinner time when Jim Hammond awoke from his sleep of physical and
+nervous exhaustion. He was puzzled to know where he was at first, but
+the memory of the night's adventure came to him, bringing both shame and
+relief. He had no watch to tell him the time, and there was no clock in
+the room. He had brought nothing with him--not a watch, or a dollar, or
+a shirt--nothing except his guilt and his shame. He flinched at the
+thought of meeting Mrs. Starkley and the girls.
+
+A knock sounded on the door, and John Starkley looked in and wished him
+good morning. "If you get up now, Jim, you'll be in time for dinner," he
+said. "Here is hot water and a shaving kit--and a few duds of Henry's
+and Peter's you can use if you care to. Set your mind at rest about the
+family, Jim. I have told my wife all that I know myself, and she feels
+as I do. As for the girls--well, I will let them know as much as is
+necessary. We mean to help you to get on your feet again, Jim."
+
+The deserter shaved with care, dressed in his own seedy garments and
+went slowly downstairs. He entered the kitchen. Mrs. Starkley and Flora
+were there, busy about the midday dinner. They looked up at him and
+smiled as he appeared in the doorway, but their eyes and Flora's quick
+change of color told him of the quality of their pity. They would feel
+the same, he knew, for any broken and drunken tramp in the ditch. But he
+was a more despicable thing than a drunken tramp. He was a deserter, a
+coward. They knew that of him, for he saw it in their eyes that tried to
+be so frank and kind; and that was not the worst of him. He could not
+advance from the threshold or meet their glances again.
+
+Mrs. Starkley went to the young man quickly and, taking his hand in
+hers, drew him into the room. Flora came forward and gave him her hand
+and said she was glad to see him; and then Emma came in from the dining
+room and said, "Hello, Mr. Hammond! I hope you can stay here a long
+time; we are very lonely."
+
+His heart was so shaken by those words that his tongue was suddenly
+loosened. He looked desperately, imploringly round, and his face went
+red as fire and then white as paper.
+
+"I'll stay--if you'll let me--until I pick up my nerve again," he said
+quickly and unsteadily. "Keep me hidden here from Stanley and my folks.
+I'll work like a nigger. I am a deserter, as you all know--and I know
+that Peter didn't tell you so. I'd do anything for him, after that. I'm
+a runaway soldier, but it wasn't because I was afraid to fight. I'll
+show you as soon as I'm fit--I'll go and fight. It was my beastly temper
+and drink that did for me. I've been near crazy since. But I'll show you
+my gratitude some day--if you give me a chance now to work round to
+feeling something like a man again."
+
+Flora and Emma were tongue-tied by the stress of their emotions. They
+could only gaze at their guest with tear-dimmed eyes. But Mrs. Starkley
+went close to him and put a hand on each of his drooped shoulders.
+
+"Of course, my dear boy," she said. "You are only a boy, Jim, a year or
+two younger than Henry, I think. Trust us to help you."
+
+During dinner they talked about the country, the war, the weather and
+the stock--about almost everything but Jim Hammond's affairs.
+
+"What do you want me to do this afternoon?" asked Jim when the meal was
+over. "I don't know much about farm work, but I can use an axe and can
+handle horses."
+
+"I was ploughing this morning; and this may be our last day before the
+frost sets in hard," said Mr. Starkley. "What about hitching Peter's
+mares to a second plow?"
+
+"Suit me fine," said Jim.
+
+It was a still, bright October afternoon, with a glow in the sunshine, a
+smell of fern and leaf in the air and a veil of blue mist on the farther
+hills. Frosts had nipped the surface of things lightly a score of times
+but had not yet struck deep. Jim Hammond, in a pair of Peter's
+long-legged boots, guided a long plough behind Peter's black and sorrel
+mares. The mares pulled steadily, and the bright plough cut smoothly
+through the sod of the old meadow. Over against the fir woods on the far
+side of the meadow John Starkley went back and forth behind his grays.
+
+Jim rested frequently at the end of a furrow, for he was not in the pink
+of condition. He noticed, for the first time in his life, the faint
+perfume of the turned loam and torn grass roots. He liked it. His
+furrows, a little uneven at first, became straighter and more even until
+they were soon almost perfect.
+
+As the red sun was sinking toward the western forests, Emma appeared,
+climbing over the rail fence from a grove of young red maples. She
+carried something under one arm. She waved a hand to her father but came
+straight to Jim. He stopped the mares midway the furrow.
+
+"I made these gingernuts myself," said Emma, holding out an uncovered
+tin box to him. "See, they are still hot. Have some."
+
+He accepted two and found them very good. The girl looked over his work
+admiringly and told him she had never seen straighter furrows except a
+few of Peter's ploughing. Then she warned him that in half an hour she
+would blow a horn for him to stop and went across to her father with
+what was left of the gingernuts. Hammond went on unwinding the old sod
+into straight furrows until the horn blew from the house.
+
+After supper he played cribbage with Mr. Starkley; and that night he
+slept soundly and without dreaming. He awoke early enough to do his
+share of the feeding and milking before breakfast. The ploughs worked
+again that day, but the next night brought a frost that held tight.
+
+The days went by peacefully for Jim Hammond. He never went on the
+highway or away from Beaver Dam and Peter's place. Sometimes, when
+people came to the house, he sat by himself in his room upstairs. He did
+his share of all the barn work, twice a week helped Mrs. Starkley and
+the girls with the churning and cut cordwood and fence rails every day.
+He never talked much, but at times his manner was almost cheerful. And
+so the days passed and October ran into November. Snow came and letters
+from France and England. The family treated him like one of themselves,
+with never a question to embarrass him or a word to hurt him. He heard
+news of his family occasionally, but never tried to see them.
+
+"They think I am somewhere in the States, hiding--or that's what father
+thinks," he said to Flora. "Some day I'll write to mother--from France."
+
+December came and Christmas. Jim kept house that day while the others
+drove to Stanley and attended the Christmas service in the church on the
+top of the long hill. A week later a man in a coonskin coat drove up to
+the kitchen door. Jim recognized him through the window as the
+postmaster of Stanley and retired up the back stairs. John Starkley, who
+had just come in from the barns, opened the door.
+
+"A cablegram for you, Mr. Starkley," said the postmaster. "It was wired
+through from Fredericton."
+
+He held out the thin envelope. Mr. Starkley stared at it, but did not
+move. His eyes narrowed, and his face looked suddenly old.
+
+"No call to be afraid of it," said the postmaster, who was also the
+telegraph operator. "I received it and know what's in it."
+
+Mr. Starkley took it then and tore it open.
+
+"Peter wounded. Doing fine. Dick Starkley" is what he read. He sighed
+with relief and called to Mrs. Starkley and the girls. Then he invited
+the man from Stanley in to dinner, saying he would see to the horse in a
+minute.
+
+"You can't expect much better news than that from men in France," John
+Starkley said to his wife. "Wounded and doing fine--why, that's better
+than no news, by a long shot. He will be safe out of the line now for
+weeks, perhaps for months. Perhaps he will even get to England. He is
+safe at this very minute, anyway."
+
+He excused himself, went upstairs and told Jim Hammond the news.
+
+"That is twice for Peter already," he said, "once right at home and once
+in Flanders. If this one isn't any worse than the first, we have nothing
+to worry about."
+
+"I hope it is just bad enough to give him a good long rest," said Jim in
+a low voice.
+
+The postmaster stayed to dinner, and Emma smuggled roast beef and
+pudding up to Jim in his bedroom. No sooner had that visitor gone than
+another drove up. This other was Vivia Hammond; and once more Jim
+retired to his room. Vivia had heard of the cablegram, but nothing of
+its import. Her face was white with anxiety.
+
+"What is it?" she cried. "The cable--what is it about?"
+
+"Peter is right as rain--wounded but doing fine," said John.
+
+Vivia cried and then laughed.
+
+"I love Peter, and I don't care who knows it!" she exclaimed. "I hope he
+has lost a leg, so they'll have to send him home. That sounds
+dreadful--but I love him so--and what does a leg matter?" She turned to
+Mrs. Starkley. "Did he ever tell you he loved me?" she asked.
+
+"He didn't have to tell us," answered Mrs. Starkley, smiling.
+
+"He does! He does!" exclaimed the girl, and then began to cry again; and
+Jim, imprisoned upstairs, wished she would go home.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER VI
+
+                    DAVE HAMMER GETS HIS COMMISSION
+
+
+BY the middle of January, 1916, Peter was in London again, now minus one
+leg but otherwise in the pink of condition. Davenport, with his crutch
+and stick and shadowing valet, visited him daily in hospital. He and
+Peter wrote letters to Beaver Dam--and Peter wrote a dozen to Stanley.
+
+Capt. Starkley-Davenport had power. Warbroken and propped between his
+crutch and stick, still he was powerful. A spirit big enough to animate
+three strong men glowed in his weak body, and he went after the medical
+officers, nursing sisters and V. A. D.'s of that hospital like a
+lieutenant general looking for trouble. He saw that Peter received every
+attention, and then that every other man in the hospital received the
+same--and yet he was as polite as your maiden aunt. Several medical
+officers, including a colonel, jumped on him--figuratively
+speaking--only to jump back again as if they had landed on spikes.
+
+As soon as he regarded Peter as fit to be moved he took him to his own
+house. There the queer servants waited on Peter day and night in order
+of seniority. They addressed him as "Sergt. Peter, sir."
+
+Over in Flanders things had bumped and smashed along much as usual since
+Christmas morning. Mr. Scammell had read his promotion in orders and the
+London Gazette, had put up his third star and had gone to brigade as
+staff captain, Intelligence; and David Hammer, with the acting rank of
+sergeant major, carried on in command of the battalion scouts. Hiram
+Sill had been awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal for his work on
+Christmas morning and the two chevrons of a corporal for his work in
+general. A proud man was Corp. Sill, with that ribbon on his chest.
+
+The changes and chances of war had also touched Dick Starkley and Frank
+Sacobie. Lieut. Smith had persuaded Dick to leave the scouts and become
+his platoon sergeant; Sacobie was made an acting sergeant--and the night
+of that very day, while he was displaying his new chevrons in No Man's
+Land, he received a wound in the neck that put him out of the line for
+two weeks.
+
+Henry Starkley--a captain now--managed to visit the battalion about
+twice a month. It was in the fire trench that he found Dick one mild and
+sunny morning of the last week of February. The brothers grinned
+affectionately and shook hands.
+
+"Peter has sailed for home, wooden leg and all," said Henry. "I got a
+letter yesterday from Jack Davenport. Except for the sneaking Hun
+submarines, Peter is fairly safe now."
+
+"I hope he makes the farm," said Dick. "He was homesick for it every
+minute and working out crop rotations on the backs of letters every
+night, in the line and out--except when he was fighting."
+
+"There was something about you in Jack's letter. He says that offer
+still stands, and he seems as anxious as ever about it."
+
+Dick sat down on the fire step, thrust out his muddy feet on the duck
+boards and gazed at them. He scratched himself meditatively in several
+places.
+
+"I'd like fine to be an officer," he said at last. "Almost any one
+would. But I don't want to leave this bunch just now. Jack's crowd will
+want officers in six months just as much as now--maybe more; and if I'm
+lucky--still in fighting shape six months from now--I'll be better able
+to handle the job."
+
+"I'll write that to Jack," said Henry. "He will understand--and your
+platoon commander will be pleased. He and the adjutant talked to me
+to-day as if something were coming to you--a D. C. M., I think. What
+happened to your first adjutant, Capt. Long, by the way?"
+
+"Long's gone west," replied Dick briefly.
+
+"I'm sorry to hear that. Shell get him?"
+
+"No, sniper. He took one chance too many."
+
+"I heard at the brigade on my way in that your friend, Dave Hammer, has
+his commission. I wonder if they have told him yet."
+
+"Good! Let's go along and tell him. He is sleeping to-day."
+
+They found Dave in his little dugout, with the mud of last night's
+expedition still caked on his person from heel to head. His blankets
+were cast aside, and he lay flat on his back and snored. His snores had
+evidently driven the proprietors of the other bunks out of that confined
+place, for he was alone. His muddy hands clasped and unclasped. He
+ceased his snoring suddenly and gabbled something very quickly and
+thickly in which only the word "wire" was recognizable. Then he jerked
+up one leg almost to his chin and shot it straight again with terrific
+force.
+
+"He is fighting in his dreams, just the way my old dog Snap used to,"
+said Dick. "We may as well wake him up, for he isn't resting."
+
+"Go to it--and welcome," said Henry. "It's an infantry job."
+
+Dick stooped and cried, "Hello, Dave!" but the sleeper only twitched an
+arm. "Wake up!" roared Dick. "Wake up and go to sleep right!" The
+sleeper closed his mouth for a second but did not open his eyes. He
+groaned, muttered something about too much light and began to snore
+again. Dick put a hand on his shoulder--and in the same breath of time
+he was gripped at wrist and throat with fingers like iron. Grasping the
+hand at his throat, Dick pulled a couple of fingers clear. Then the
+sleeper closed his mouth again and opened his eyes wide.
+
+"Oh, it's you, Dick!" he said. "Sorry. Must have been dreaming."
+
+He sat up and shook hands with Henry. When he heard of his promotion he
+blushed and got out of his bunk.
+
+"That's a bit of cheering news," he said "I'll have a wash on the
+strength of that, and something to eat. Wish we were out, and I'd give a
+little party. Wonder if I can raise a set of stars to wear to-night,
+just for luck."
+
+Henry went away half an hour later, and Dick returned to the fire
+trench. Capt. Keen, the adjutant, came looking for Hammer, found him
+still at his toilet and congratulated him heartily on his promotion.
+
+"Come along and feed with me, if you have had enough sleep," said the
+adjutant. "The colonel wants to see you. He had a talk with you
+yesterday, didn't he--about to-night's job?"
+
+"Yes, sir; and it will be a fine job, if the weather is just right.
+Looks now as if it might be too clear, but we'll know by sundown. I was
+dreaming about it a while ago. We were in, and I had a big sentry by the
+neck when Dick Starkley woke me up. I had grabbed Dick."
+
+"The colonel is right," said Capt. Keen. "You're working too hard,
+Hammer, and you're beginning to show it; your eyes look like the
+mischief. This fighting in your sleep is a bad sign."
+
+"The whole army could do with a rest, for that matter," replied Hammer,
+"but who would go on with the work? What I am worrying about now is rank
+badges. I'd like to doll up a bit for to-night."
+
+They went back to the sandbagged cellar under the broken farmhouse that
+served as headquarters for whatever battalion held that part of the
+line. On their way they had borrowed an old jacket with two stars on
+each sleeve from Lieut. Smith; and in that garment Dave Hammer appeared
+at the midday meal. The colonel, the medical officer, the padre and the
+quartermaster were there. They congratulated Dave on his promotion, and
+the colonel placed him at his right hand at the table on an upended
+biscuit box.
+
+The fare consisted of roast beef and boiled potatoes, a serviceable
+apple pie and coffee. The conversation was of a general character until
+after the attack on the pie--an attack that was driven to complete
+success only by the padre, who prided himself on the muscular
+development of his jaws. The commanding officer, somewhat daunted in
+spirit by the pastry, looked closely at the lieutenant.
+
+"You need a rest, Hammer," he said. "Keen, didn't I tell you yesterday
+that Hammer must take a rest? Doc, just slant an eye at this young
+officer and give me your opinion. Doesn't he look like all-get-out?"
+
+"Looks like get-out-of-the-front-line to me, sir," said the medical
+officer. "A couple of weeks back would set him on his feet. You say the
+word, sir, and I'll send him back this very day."
+
+"But the show!" exclaimed Hammer. "I must go out to-night, sir!"
+
+"Hammer is the only officer with his party, sir," said Capt. Keen to the
+colonel. "As you know, sir, we held the organization down this time to
+only one officer with each of our four parties--because officers are not
+very plentiful with us just now."
+
+"That's the trouble!" exclaimed the colonel. "They hem and haw and chew
+the rag over our recommendations for commissions and keep sending us
+green officers from England who don't know the fine points of the game.
+So here we are forced to let Hammer go out to-night, when he should be
+in his blankets. But back he goes to-morrow!"
+
+Dave had intended to sleep that afternoon, but the excitement caused by
+the news of his promotion made it impossible. He who had never missed a
+minute's slumber through fear of death was set fluttering at heart and
+nerves by the two worsted "pips" on each sleeve of his borrowed jacket.
+The coat was borrowed--but the right to wear the stars was his, his very
+own, earned in Flanders. He toured the trenches--fire, communication and
+support--feeling that his stars were as big as pie plates.
+
+Sentries, whose bayonet-tipped rifles leaned against the parapet,
+saluted and then grasped his hand. Subalterns and captains hailed him as
+a brother; and so did sergeants, with a "sir" or two thrown in. As Dave
+passed on his embarrassed but triumphant way down the trench his heart
+pounded as no peril of war had ever set it pounding. No emperor had ever
+known greater ache and uplift of glory than this grand conflagration in
+the heart and brain of Lieut. David Hammer, Canadian Infantry.
+
+He visited his scouts; and they seemed as pleased at his "pips" as if
+each one of them had got leave to London. Even Sergt. Frank Sacobie's
+dark and calm visage showed flickers of emotion. Corp. Hiram Sill, D. C.
+M., who visioned everything in a large and glowing style, saw in his
+mind's eye the King in Buckingham Palace agreeing with some mighty
+general, all red and gold and ribbons, that this heroic and deserving
+young man should certainly be granted a commission for the fine work he
+was doing with the distinguished scouts of that very fine regiment.
+
+"I haven't a doubt that was the way of it," said Old Psychology. "People
+with jobs like that are trained from infancy to grasp details; and I bet
+King George has the name of everyone of us on the tip of his tongue. You
+can bet your hat he isn't one to give away Distinguished Conduct Medals
+without knowing what he is about."
+
+Hiram joined in the laughter that followed his inspiring statements; not
+that he thought he had said anything to laugh at, but merely to be
+sociable.
+
+That "show" was to be a big one--a brigade affair with artillery
+coöperation. The battalion on the right was to send out two parties, one
+to bomb the opposite trench and the other to capture and demolish a
+hostile sap head--and together to raise Old Ned in general and so hold
+as much of the enemy's attention as possible from the main event. The
+battalion on the left was to put on an exhibition of rifle, machine-gun
+and trench-mortar fire that would assuredly keep the garrison opposite
+occupied with its own affairs.
+
+As for the artillery, it had already worked through two thirds of its
+elaborate programme. Four nights ago it had put on a shoot at two points
+in the hostile wire and front line, three hundred yards apart, short but
+hot. Then it had lifted to the support and reserve trenches. Three
+nights ago it had done much the same things, but not at the same hours,
+and on a wider frontage. The enemy, sure of being raided, had turned on
+his lights and his machine guns on both occasions--on nothing. He could
+do nothing then toward repairing his wire, for after our guns had
+churned up his entanglements our machine guns played upon the scene and
+kept him behind his parapet. The batteries had been quiet two nights
+ago, and Fritz, expecting a raid in force, had lost his nerve entirely.
+Our eighteen pounders had lashed him at noon the next day, and again at
+sunset and again at eleven o'clock; and so he had sat up all night again
+with his nerves.
+
+At four o'clock in the afternoon of this day of Dave Hammer's promotion
+the batteries went at it again, smashing wire and parapets with field
+guns and shooting up registered targets farther back with heavier metal.
+When hostile batteries retaliated, we did counter-battery work with such
+energy and skill that we soon had the last word in the argument. The
+deeds of the gunners put the infantry in high spirits.
+
+The afternoon grew misty; shortly after five o'clock there was a shower.
+At half past seven scouts went out from the 26th and the battalion on
+the right and, returning, reported that the wire was nicely ripped and
+chewed. At eight the battalion on the left put on a formidable
+trench-mortar shoot, which quite upset the nerve-torn enemy. Then all
+was at rest on that particular piece of the western front--except for
+the German illumination--until half past twelve.
+
+Half past twelve was Zero Hour. A misty rain was seeping down from a
+slate-gray sky. Six lieutenants in the fire trench of two battalions
+took their eyes from the dials of their wrist watches, said "time" to
+their sergeants and went over, with their men at their heels and elbows.
+The two larger parties from our battalion were to get into the opposite
+trench side by side, there separate one to the left and one to the
+right, do what they could in seven minutes or until recalled, then get
+out and run for home with their casualties--if any. They were to pass
+their prisoners out as they collared them. The smaller parties were made
+up of riflemen, stretcher bearers and escorts for the prisoners. The
+raiding parties were commanded by Mr. Hammer, with Sergt. Sacobie second
+in command, and Mr. Smith, with Sergt. Richard Starkley second in
+command. Corp. Hiram Sill was in Hammer's crowd.
+
+Captain Scammell from brigade, the colonel and the adjutant stood in the
+trench at the point of exit. Suddenly they heard the dry, smashing
+reports of grenades through the chatter of machine-gun fire on the left.
+The bombs went fast and furious, punctuated by the crack of rifles and
+bursts of pistol fire. S. O. S. rockets went up from the German
+positions; and, as if in answer to those signals, our batteries laid a
+heavy barrage on and just in rear of the enemy's support trenches. The
+colonel flashed a light on his wrist.
+
+"They have been in four minutes," he said.
+
+At that moment a muddy figure with blackened face and hands and a slung
+rifle on his back scrambled into the trench, turned and pulled something
+over the parapet that sprawled at the colonel's feet.
+
+"Here's one of them, sir; and there's more coming," said the man of mud.
+"Ah! Here's another. Boost him over, you fellers."
+
+       [Illustration: "'HERE'S ONE OF THEM, SIR; AND THERE'S MORE
+                    COMING,' SAID THE MAN OF MUD."]
+
+Into the trench tumbled another Fritz, and then a third, and then a
+Canadian, and then two more prisoners and the third Canadian.
+
+"Five," said the last of the escort. "Us three started for home with
+eight, but something hit the rest of 'em--T-M bomb, I reckon."
+
+"Sure it was," said the Canadian who had arrived first. "Don't I know? I
+got a chunk of it in my leg." He stooped and fumbled at the calf of his
+right leg. The adjutant turned a light on him, and the man extended his
+hand, dripping with blood.
+
+"You beat it for the M. O., my lad," said the colonel.
+
+Five more prisoners came in under a guard of two; and then six more of
+the raiders arrived, two of whom were carrying Lieut. Smith. The
+lieutenant's head was bandaged roughly, and the dressing was already
+soaked with blood.
+
+"We did them in, sir," he said thickly to the colonel. "Caught them in
+bunches--and bombed three dugouts."
+
+He was carried away, still muttering of the fight. By that time the
+majority of the other parties were in. Several of the men were
+wounded--and they had brought their dead with them, three in number. The
+Germans had turned their trench mortars on their own front line from
+their support trenches.
+
+"They're not all in yet," said Capt. Keen. "Hammer isn't in."
+
+Just then Dick Starkley slid into the trench.
+
+"That you, Dick? Did you see Mr. Hammer? Or Frank Sacobie? Or Bruce
+McDonald?"
+
+"I have McDonald--but some one's got to help me lift him over," said
+Dick breathlessly. "Heavy as a horse--and hit pretty bad!"
+
+Two men immediately slipped over the top and hoisted big McDonald into
+the trench. Hiram Sill put a hand on Dick's shoulder.
+
+"Dave Hammer and Sacobie," he whispered, "are still out. Hadn't we
+better--"
+
+"Right," said Dick. "Come on out." He turned to Capt. Scammell. "Please
+don't let the guns shorten for a minute or two, sir; Sill and I have to
+go out again."
+
+Without waiting for an answer they whipped over the sandbags. Hiram was
+back in two minutes. He turned on the fire step and received something
+that Dick and Frank Sacobie lifted over to him. It was Dave Hammer,
+unconscious and breathing hoarsely, with his eyes shut, his borrowed
+tunic drenched with mud and blood and one of his bestarred sleeves shot
+away. Capt. Scammell swayed against the colonel and, for a second, put
+his hand to his eyes.
+
+"Steady, lad, steady," said the colonel in a queer, cracked voice.
+"Keen, tell the guns to drop on their front line with all they've
+got--and then some."
+
+To the whining and screeching of our shells driving low overhead and the
+tumultuous chorus of their exploding, passed the undismayed soul of
+Lieut. David Hammer of the Canadian Infantry.
+
+Heedless of the coming and going of the shells and the quaking of the
+parapet, Sacobie sat on the fire step with his hands between his knees
+and stared fixedly at nothing; but Hiram Sill and young Dick Starkley
+wept without thought of concealment, and their tears washed white
+furrows down their blackened faces.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER VII
+
+                         PETER WRITES A LETTER
+
+
+IN March, 1916, Sergt. Peter Starkley got back to his own country,
+bigger in the chest and an inch taller than when he had gone away. He
+walked a little stiffly on his right foot, it is true--but what did that
+matter? His letters to the people at home had, by intention, given them
+only a vague idea of the possible date of his arrival. They knew that he
+was coming, that he was well, and that his new leg was such a
+masterpiece of construction that he had danced on it in London on two
+occasions. Otherwise he was unannounced.
+
+He went to the town of Stanley first and left his baggage in the freight
+shed at the siding. With his haversack on his shoulder and a stout stick
+in his right hand, he set out along the white and slippery road. Before
+he got to the bridge a two-horse sled overtook him, and the driver, an
+elderly man whom he did not know, invited him to climb on. Peter
+accepted the invitation with all the agility at his command.
+
+"You step a mite lame on your right leg," said the driver.
+
+"That's so," replied Peter, smiling.
+
+"Been soldierin', hey? See any fight-in'?"
+
+"Yes, I've been in Flanders."
+
+"That so? I've got a boy in the war. Smart boy, too. They give him a job
+right in England. He wears spurs to his boots, he does; and it ain't
+everyone kin wear them spurs, he writes me. This here war ain't all in
+Flanders. We had some shootin' round here about a year back out Pike's
+Settlement way. A young feller in soldier uniform was drivin' along, and
+some one shot at him from the woods. That's what _he_ said, but my
+boy--that was afore he went to the war--says like enough he shot himself
+so's to git out of goin'. He's a smart lad--that's why they give him a
+job in England. Army Service Corps, he is--so I reckon maybe he's right
+about that feller shootin' himself."
+
+"What's his name?" asked Peter quietly.
+
+"Starkley. Peter Starkley from Beaver Dam."
+
+"I'm asking the name of that smart son of yours."
+
+"Gus Todder's his name--Gus Todder, junior. Maybe you know him," was the
+reply.
+
+"No, but I've got his number," said Peter. "You tell him so in the next
+letter you write him. Tell him that Sergt. Peter Starkley of the 26th
+Canadian Infantry Battalion will be glad to see him when he comes home;
+tell him not to cut himself on those spurs of his in the meantime; and
+you'd better advise him to warn _his father_ not to shoot his mouth off
+in future to military men about things he is ignorant of. Here's where I
+get off. Thanks for the lift."
+
+Peter left the sled, but turned at the other's voice and stood looking
+back at him.
+
+"I didn't get the hang of all that you was sayin'," said Todder. He was
+plainly disconcerted.
+
+"Never mind; your son will catch the drift of it," replied Peter. "I am
+too happy about getting home to be fussy about little things, but don't
+chat quite so freely with every returned infantryman you see about your
+son's smartness. You call it smartness--but the fellows up where I left
+my right leg have another name for it."
+
+Opening the white gate, he went up the deep and narrow path between snow
+banks to the white house. At the top of the short flight of steps that
+led to the winter porch that inclosed the front door, he looked over his
+shoulder and saw Todder still staring at him. Peter grinned and waved
+his hand, then opened the door of the porch.
+
+As he closed the door behind him, the house door opened wide before him.
+Vivia stood on the threshold. She stared at him with her eyes very round
+and her lips parted, but she did not move or speak. She held her slim
+hands clasped before her--clasped so tight that the knuckles were
+colorless. Her small face, which had been as pale as her clasped hands
+at the first glimpse, turned suddenly as red as a rose; and her eyes,
+which had been very bright even to their wonderful depths, were dimmed
+suddenly with a shimmer of tears. And for a long time--for ten full
+seconds, it may have been--Peter also stood motionless and stared. The
+heavy stick slipped from his fingers and fell with a clatter on the
+floor of the porch. He stepped forward then and enfolded her in his
+khaki-clad arms, safe and sure against the big brass buttons of his
+greatcoat; and just then the door of the porch opened, and Mr. Todder
+said:
+
+"I ain't got the hang of yer remarks yet, young feller."
+
+"Chase yourself away home," replied Peter, without turning his head; and
+there was something in the tone of his voice that caused Mr. Todder to
+withdraw his head from the porch and to retire, muttering, to his sled.
+Vivia had not paid the slightest heed to the interruption. She drew
+Peter into the hall.
+
+"I was afraid," she whispered. "I didn't know how much they had hurt
+you, Peter--but I wasn't afraid of that. I should love you just as much
+if they had crippled you,--I am so selfish in my love, Peter,--but I was
+afraid, at first, that I might see a change in your eyes."
+
+"There couldn't be a change in my eyes when I look at you, unless I were
+blind," said Peter. "Even if I were blind, I guess I could see you. But
+I am the same as I was, inside and out--all except a bit of a patent
+leg."
+
+Just then Mrs. Hammond made her discreet appearance, expressed her joy
+and surprise at the sight of Peter and ventured a motherly kiss. Mr.
+Hammond came in from the store half an hour later and welcomed Peter
+cordially. The man had lost weight, and his face was grim. He got Peter
+to himself for a few minutes just before supper.
+
+"Jim is still on the other side the border somewhere, I guess," he said,
+"though I haven't heard from him for months. I've kept the shooting
+business quiet, Peter--and even about his deserting; but I had to tell
+his mother and Vivia that he wasn't any good as a soldier and had gone
+away. I made up some kind of story about it. Other people think he's in
+France, I guess--even your folks at Beaver Dam. But what do you hear of
+Pat? He isn't much of a hand at writing letters, but was well when he
+wrote last to his mother."
+
+"I didn't see him over there, but Henry ran across him and said that he
+is doing fine work. He's got his third pip and is attached to
+headquarters of one of the brigades of the First Division as a learner.
+He has been wounded once, I believe, but very slightly."
+
+"And I used to think that Pat wasn't much good--too easy-going and
+loose-footed," said Mr. Hammond bitterly. "My idea of a man was a
+storekeeper. Well, I think of him now, and I stick out my chest--and
+then I remember Jim, and my chest caves in again."
+
+They were interrupted then by Vivia; so nothing more was said about the
+deserter. After supper Peter had to prove to the family that he could
+dance on his new leg.
+
+"I'll hitch the grays to the pung," said Mr. Hammond when about eight
+o'clock Peter got ready to go. "It's a fine night, and the roads are a
+marvel. I'll drive you home."
+
+"And I am going too," said Vivia.
+
+Dry maple sticks burned on the hearth of the big Franklin stove in the
+sitting room of Beaver Dam. Flora sat at the big table writing a letter
+to Dick; John Starkley and Jim Hammond played checkers; and Mrs.
+Starkley nodded in a chair by the fire. Emma had gone to bed. John
+Starkley had his hand raised and hovering for a master move when a
+jangle of bells burst suddenly upon their ears. Flora darted to a
+window, and the farmer hastened to the front door; but by the time Flora
+had drawn back the curtains and her father had opened the door Jim
+Hammond was upstairs and in his room.
+
+Jim did not light the candle that stood on the window sill at the head
+of his bed. He closed the door behind him. The blind was up; starshine
+from the world of white and purple and silver without sifted faintly
+into the little room. He stood for a minute in the middle of the floor,
+listening to the broken and muffled sounds of talk and laughter from the
+lower hall. He heard a trill of Vivia's laughter. What had brought Vivia
+out again, he wondered. News of Peter, beyond a doubt; and good news, to
+judge by the sounds. He seated himself cautiously on the edge of the
+bed.
+
+Now he heard his father's voice. Yes--and John Starkley was laughing.
+There was another man's voice, but he could hear only a low note of it
+now and then in the confused, happy babble of sound. A door shut--and
+then he could not hear anything. He wondered who the third man was and
+decided that he probably was some one from the village who had just
+arrived home and who had brought messages from Peter. Perhaps, he
+thought, Peter was even then on his way from England.
+
+Jim sat there with the faint shine of the stars falling soft on the rag
+carpet at his feet and thought what wonderful people the Starkleys were.
+They had taken him in and treated him like one of the family--and like a
+white man. Now that Peter was coming home and would be able to help with
+the work, he would go away and show John Starkley that he had found his
+courage and his manhood. He had made his plans in a general way weeks
+before. He would go to another province and enlist in the artillery or
+in the infantry under an assumed name; if he "made good," or got killed,
+John Starkley would tell all the good he could of him to his family in
+Stanley. Already he felt lonely, a dreary chill of homesickness, at the
+thought of leaving Beaver Dam.
+
+A door opened and closed downstairs, but Jim Hammond was too busy with
+his thoughts and high resolves to hear the faint sounds. He even did not
+hear the feet on the carpeted stairs--and a hand was on the latch of the
+door before he knew that some one was about to enter the room. He sat
+rigid and stared at the door.
+
+The door opened and some one entered who bulked large and tall in the
+pale half gloom of the room. The visitor halted and turned his face
+toward the bed.
+
+"Who's there?" he asked; and Jim could see the shoulders lower and
+advance a little and the whole figure become tense as if for attack.
+
+"It's me, Peter!" whispered Jim sharply "Shut the door quick!"
+
+"You! You, Jim Hammond!" said Peter in a voice of amazement and anger.
+"What the mischief are you doing here?" Without turning his face from
+the bed he shut the door behind him with his heel. "Light the candle and
+pull down the shade. Let me see you."
+
+Jim got to his feet and reached for the shade, but Peter spoke before he
+touched it.
+
+"No! The candle first!" exclaimed Peter, with an edge to his voice. "I
+don't trust you in the dark any more than I trust you in the woods."
+
+Hammond struck a match and lit the candle, then drew down the shade and
+turned with his back to the window. His face was pale. "I didn't figure
+on your getting home so soon," he said in an unsteady voice. "I didn't
+intend to be here. I thought I'd be gone before you came."
+
+"What are you doing here, anyway?" demanded Peter. "What's the game?
+Sitting in my room, on my bed, quite at home, by thunder! And your
+father thinks you are in the States. Does my father know you are here?"
+
+Jim smiled faintly. "Yes, he knows--and all your folks know. I've been
+here since about the middle of October, working, and sleeping in this
+room every night. My people don't know where I am--but when I get to
+France you can tell them. Your father doesn't know that it was I who
+fired that shot--and when I found you hadn't told him that, or even that
+I was a deserter, I felt it was up to me to do my best for you while you
+were away. So I've worked hard and been happy here; and I'll be sorry to
+go away--but I must go now that you're home again. Don't tell my people
+I'm here, Peter."
+
+"You have been living here ever since the middle of October, working
+here, and your own father and mother don't know where you are?"
+
+"Your people are the only ones who know."
+
+Peter eyed him in silence for a minute.
+
+"Why did you shoot me, Jim?" he asked more gently.
+
+"How do I know?" exclaimed Hammond. "I was drinking; I was just about
+mad with drink. I liked you well enough, Peter,--I didn't want to kill
+you,--but the devil was in me. It was drink made me act so bad in St.
+John; it was drink made me desert; it was drink that came near making a
+murderer of me. That's the truth, Peter--and now I wish you'd go
+downstairs, for I don't want my father or Vivia to find me here--or to
+know anything about me till I'm in France."
+
+"Shall I find you here when I come back?" asked Peter.
+
+"I'll come downstairs as soon as they go," said Hammond.
+
+Peter was about to leave the room when he suddenly remembered the errand
+that had brought him away from the company downstairs. It was a
+photograph of himself taken at the age of five years. Vivia had heard of
+it and asked for it; and before either of his parents or Flora had been
+able to think of a way of stopping him he had started upstairs for it.
+Now he found it on the top of a shelf of old books and wiped off the
+dust on his sleeve.
+
+"Vivia wants it," he said, smiling self-consciously.
+
+He found Flora waiting at the head of the stairs for him.
+
+"It's all right; I've had a talk with him," he whispered, and when he
+reached the sitting room he met the anxious glances of his parents with
+a smile and nod that set their immediate anxieties at rest.
+
+It was past midnight when Vivia and her father drove away. Then Jim came
+downstairs, and Peter shook hands with him in the most natural way in
+the world.
+
+"When we met in my bedroom we were both too astonished to shake hands,"
+explained Peter.
+
+"You must sleep in Dick's room now, Peter," said Mrs. Starkley.
+
+"Only for one night," said Jim, trying to smile but making a poor job of
+it. "I'll be off to-morrow, now that Peter is home again--just as I
+planned all along, you know. I--it isn't the going back to the army I
+mind; it is--leaving you people."
+
+He smiled more desperately than ever.
+
+Mrs. Starkley and Flora did not dare trust their voices to reply. John
+Starkley laid a hand on Jim's shoulder and said, "Go when it suits you,
+Jim, and come back when it suits you--and we shall miss you when you are
+away, remember that."
+
+The three men sat up for another hour, talking of Peter's experiences
+and Jim's plans. They went upstairs at last, but even then neither Peter
+nor Jim could sleep, for the one was restless with happiness and the
+other with the excitement of impending change. Peter would see Vivia on
+the morrow, and Jim would meet strange faces. Peter had returned to the
+security that he had fought and shed his blood for and to the life and
+people he loved; Jim's fighting was all before him, and behind him a
+disgrace to be outlived.
+
+After a while Peter got up and went to Jim's room in his pyjamas; he sat
+on the edge of Jim's bed, and they talked of the fighting over in
+France.
+
+"I've been thinking about my reënlistment," said Jim, "and I guess I'll
+take a chance on my own name. It's my name I want to make good."
+
+"Sounds risky--but I don't believe it is as risky as it sounds," said
+Peter.
+
+"Not if I go far enough away to enlist--to Halifax or Toronto. There
+must be lots of Hammonds in the army. I'll take the risk, anyway. It
+isn't likely I'll run across any of the old crowd. None of our old
+officers would be hard on me, I guess, if they found me fighting and
+doing my duty."
+
+"Capt. Long is dead. A great many of the old crowd are dead, and others
+have been promoted out of the regiment. Remember Dave Hammer?"
+
+"Yes. If I could ever be as good a soldier as Dave Hammer I think I'd
+forget--except sometimes in the middle of the night, maybe--what a mean,
+worthless fellow I have been."
+
+"I'll tell you what, Jim," said Peter suddenly, "I'll write a letter for
+you to carry; and if any one spots you over there and is nasty about it,
+you go to any officer you know in the old battalion and tell the truth
+and show my letter. I guess that will clear your name, Jim, if you do
+your duty."
+
+"You don't mean to put _everything_ in the letter, do you?"
+
+"Only what is known officially--that you went home from your regiment
+here in Canada on pass, started acting the fool and deserted. That is
+the charge against you, Jim--desertion. But it is the mildest sort of
+desertion, and reënlistment just about offsets it. The same thing done
+in France in the face of the enemy is punished--you know how."
+
+"Yes, I know how it is punished," said Hammond. "You wouldn't worry
+about that if you knew as much about how I feel now as I do myself. Of
+course I've got to prove it before you'll believe it, Peter, but I'm not
+afraid to fight."
+
+When Peter had gone back to his room, he sat down to write the letter
+that Jim Hammond was to carry in his pocket. It was a long letter, and
+Peter was a slow writer. He spared no pains in making every point of his
+argument perfectly clear. He staked the military reputation of the whole
+Starkley family on James Hammond's future behavior as a soldier. He
+sealed it with red wax and his great-grandfather's seal and addressed
+the envelope to "Any Officer of the 26th Can. Infty. Bn. or of any Unit
+of the Can. Army Corps of the B. E. F." When finally he had the letter
+done, it was morning.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER VIII
+
+                           THE 26TH "MOPS UP"
+
+
+AFTER Jim Hammond went away from Beaver Dam he wrote to Mrs. Starkley
+from Toronto, saying that he had enlisted in a new infantry battalion
+and that all was well with him. That was the last news from him, or of
+him, to be received at Beaver Dam for many months.
+
+The war held and crushed and sweated on the western front. Every day
+found the Canadians in the grinding and perilous toil of it. In April,
+1916, the Second Canadian Division held the ground about St. Eloi
+against terrific onslaughts. Then and there were fought those desperate
+actions known as the Battles of the Craters. Hiram Sill, D. C. M., now a
+sergeant, received a wound that put him out of action for nearly two
+months. Dick Starkley was buried twice, once beneath the lip of one of
+the craters as it returned to earth after a jump into the air, and again
+in his dugout. No bones were broken, but he had to rest for three days.
+
+Other Canadian divisions moved into the Ypres salient in April--back to
+their first field of glory of the year before. That salient of terrible
+fame, advanced round the battered city of Ypres like a blunt spearhead
+driven into the enemy's positions, will live for centuries after its
+trenches are leveled. British soldiers have fallen in their tens of
+thousands in and beyond and on the flanks of that city of destruction.
+From three sides the German guns flailed it through four desperate
+years. Masses of German infantry surged up and broke against its torn
+edges, German gas drenched it, liquid fire scorched it, and mines
+blasted it. Now and again the edge of that salient was bent inward a
+little for a day or a week; but in those four years no German set foot
+in that city of heroic ruins except as a prisoner.
+
+The 26th Battalion celebrated Dominion Day--July 1st--by raiding a
+convenient point of the German front line. The assault was made by a
+party of twenty-five "other ranks" commanded by two junior officers. It
+was supported by the fire of our heavy field guns and heavy and medium
+trench mortars.
+
+Sergts. Frank Sacobie and Hiram Sill were of the party, but Dick
+Starkley was not. Dick could not be spared for it from his duties with
+his platoon, for he was in acting command during the enforced absence of
+Lieut. Smith, who was suffering at a base hospital from a combination of
+gas and fever. The men from New Brunswick were observed by the garrison
+of the threatened trench while they were still on the wrong side of the
+inner line of hostile wire, and a heavy but wild fire was opened on them
+with rifles and machine guns. But the raiders did not pause. They passed
+through the last entanglement, entered the trench, killed a number of
+the enemy and collected considerable material for identification. Their
+casualties were few, and no wound was of a serious nature. Hiram Sill
+was dizzy and bleeding freely, but cheerful. One small fragment of a
+bomb had cut open his right cheek, and another had nicked his left
+shoulder. Sacobie carried him home on his back.
+
+It was a little affair, remarkable only as a new way of celebrating
+Dominion Day, and differed only in minor details from hundreds of other
+little bursts of aggressive activity on that front.
+
+Later in the month a Distinguished Service Order, two Military Crosses,
+four Distinguished Conduct Medals and five Military Medals were awarded
+to the battalion in recognition of its work about St. Eloi. Dick
+Starkley and Frank Sacobie each drew a D. C. M. A few days after that
+Lieut. Smith returned from Blighty and took back the command of his
+platoon from Dick; and at the same time he informed Dick that he was
+earmarked for a commission.
+
+The Canadians began their march from the Ypres salient to the Somme on
+September 1, 1916. They marched cheerfully, glad of a change and hoping
+for the best. The weather was fine, and the towns and villages through
+which they passed seemed to them pleasant places full of friendly
+people. They were going to fight on a new front; and, as became
+soldiers, it was their firm belief that any change would be for the
+better.
+
+On the 8th of September, while on the march, Dick Starkley was gazetted
+a lieutenant of Canadian Infantry. Mr. Smith found his third star in the
+same gazette, and Dick took the platoon. Henry visited the battalion a
+few days later and presented to the new lieutenant an old uniform that
+would do very well until the London tailors were given a chance. Dick
+was a proud soldier that day; and an opportunity of showing his new
+dignity to the enemy soon occurred. That opportunity was the famous
+battle of Courcelette.
+
+From one o'clock of the afternoon of September 14 until four o'clock the
+next morning our heavy guns and howitzers belabored with high explosive
+shells the fortified sugar refinery and its strong trenches and the
+village of Courcelette beyond. Then for an hour the big guns were
+silent. The battalions of the Fourth and Sixth Brigades waited in their
+jumping-off trenches before Pozières. The Fifth Brigade, of which the
+26th Battalion was a unit, rested in reserve.
+
+Dawn broke with a clear sky and promise of sunshine and a frosty tingle
+in the air. At six o'clock the eighteen-pounder guns of nine brigades of
+artillery, smashing into sudden activity, laid a dense barrage on the
+nearest rim of the German positions. Four minutes later the barrage
+lifted and jumped forward one hundred yards, and the infantry climbed
+out of their trenches and followed it into the first German trench. The
+fight was on in earnest, and in shell holes, in corners of trenches and
+against improvised barricades many great feats of arms were dared and
+achieved. A tank led the infantry against the strongly fortified ruins
+of the refinery and toppled down everything in its path.
+
+Lieut. Dick Starkley and his friends gave ear all morning to the din of
+battle, wished themselves farther forward in the middle of it and
+wondered whether the brigades in front would leave anything for them to
+do on the morrow. Messages of success came back to them from time to
+time. By eight o'clock, after two hours of fighting, the Canadians had
+taken the formidable trenches, the sugar refinery, a fortified sunken
+road and hundreds of prisoners. The way was open to Courcelette.
+
+"If they don't slow up--if they don't quit altogether this very
+minute--they'll be crowding right in to Courcelette and doing us out of
+a job!" complained Sergt. Hiram Sill. "That's our job, Courcelette
+is--our job for to-morrow. They've done what they set out to do, and if
+they go ahead now and try something they haven't planned for, well,
+they'll maybe bite off more than they can chew. The psychology of it
+will be all wrong; their minds aren't made up to that idea."
+
+"I guess the idee ain't the hull thing," remarked a middle-aged
+corporal. "Many a good job has been done kind of unexpectedly in this
+war. I reckon this here psychology didn't have much to do with your D.
+C. M."
+
+"That's where you're dead wrong, Henry," said Hiram. "I knew I'd get a
+D. C. M. all along, from the first minute I ever set foot in a trench.
+My mind and my spirit were all made up for it. I knew I'd get a D. C. M.
+just as sure as I know now that I'll get a bar to it--if I don't go west
+first."
+
+Dick, who had joined the group, laughed and smote Hiram on the shoulder.
+
+"You're dead right!" he exclaimed. "Old Psychology, you're a wonder of
+the age! Be careful what you make up your heart and soul and mind to
+next or you'll find yourself in command of the division."
+
+"What do you mean, lieutenant?" asked Sill.
+
+"You've been awarded the D. C. M. again, that's all!" cried Dick,
+shaking him violently by the hand. "You've got your bar, Old Psychology!
+Word of it just came through from the Brigade."
+
+Sergt. Sill blushed and grew pale and blushed again.
+
+"Say, boys, I'm a proud man," he said. "There are some things you can't
+get used to--and being decorated for distinguished conduct on the field
+of glory is one of them, I guess. If you'll excuse me, boys,--and you,
+lieutenant,--I'll just wander along that old trench a piece and think it
+over by myself."
+
+The way was open to Courcelette. The battalions that had done the work
+in a few hours and that, despite a terrific fire from the enemy, had
+established themselves beyond their final objective, were anxious to
+continue about this business without pause and clean up the strongly
+garrisoned town. They had fought desperately in those few hours,
+however, and the enemy's fire had taken toll of them, and so they were
+told to sit tight in their new trenches; but the common sense of their
+assertion that Courcelette itself should be assaulted without loss of
+time, before the beaten and astounded enemy could recover, was admitted.
+
+At half past three o'clock that afternoon the Fifth Brigade received its
+orders and instructions and immediately passed them on and elaborated
+them to the battalions concerned. By five o'clock the three battalions
+that were to make the attack were on their way across the open country,
+advancing in waves. German guns battered them but did not break their
+alignment. They reached our new trenches and, with the barrage of our
+own guns now moving before them, passed through and over the victorious
+survivors of the morning's battle.
+
+The French Canadians and the Nova Scotians went first in two waves.
+
+Dick Starkley and his platoon were on the right of the front line of the
+26th, which was the third wave of attack. "Mopping up" was the
+battalion's particular job on this occasion.
+
+"Mopping up," like most military terms, means considerably more than it
+suggests to the ear. The mops are rifles, bombs and bayonets; the things
+to be mopped are machine-gun posts still in active operation, bays and
+sections of trenches still occupied by aggressive Germans, mined cellars
+and garrisoned dugouts. Everything of a menacing nature that the
+assaulting waves have passed over or outflanked without demolishing must
+be dealt with by the "moppers-up."
+
+The two lines of the 26th advanced at an easy walk; there was about five
+yards between man and man. Each man carried water and rations for
+forty-eight hours and five empty sandbags, over and above his arms and
+kit. The men kept their alignment all the way up to the edge of the
+village. Now and again they closed on the center or extended to right or
+left to fill a gap. Wounded men crawled into shell holes or were picked
+up and carried forward. Dead men lay sprawled beneath their equipment,
+with their rifles and bayonets out thrust toward Courcelette even in
+death. The "walking wounded" continued to go forward, some unconscious
+or unmindful of their injuries and others trying to bandage themselves
+as they walked.
+
+Col. MacKenzie led them, and beside him walked a company commander. The
+two shouted to each other above the din of battle, and sometimes they
+turned and shouted back to their men. Other officers walked a few paces
+in front of their men.
+
+A bursting shell threw Dick backward into a small crater that had been
+made earlier in the day and knocked the breath out of him for a few
+seconds. Frank Sacobie picked him up. The colonel gave the signal to
+double, and the right flank of the 26th broke from a walk into a slow
+and heavy jog. Sacobie jogged beside Dick.
+
+"Just a year since we came into the line!" shouted Dick.
+
+"We were pa'tridge shootin' two years ago to-day!" bawled Sacobie.
+
+The colonel turned with his back to Courcelette and his face to his men
+and yelled at them to come on. "Speed up on the right!" he shouted. "The
+left is ahead. The 25th is in already. Shake a leg, boys. If they don't
+move quick enough in front, blow right through 'em."
+
+At the near edge of the village a number of New Brunswickers, including
+their colonel, overtook and mingled with the second line of the 22d. Our
+barrage was lifted clear of Courcelette by this time and set like a
+spouting wall of fire and earth along the far side of it; but the shells
+of the enemy continued to pitch into it, heaving bricks and rafters and
+the soil of little gardens into the vibrating twilight. Machine guns
+streamed their fire upon the invaders from attics and cellars and
+sand-bagged windows. The bombs and rifles of the 22d smashed and cracked
+just ahead; and on the left, still farther ahead, crashes and bangs and
+shouts told all who could hear the whereabouts of Hilliam and his lads
+from Nova Scotia.
+
+Dick Starkley saw a darting flicker of fire from the butt of a broken
+chimney beyond a cellar full of bricks and splintered timber. He shouted
+to his men, let his pistol swing from its lanyard and threw a bomb.
+Then, stooping low, he dashed at the jumble of ruins in the cellar. He
+saw his bomb burst beside the stump of chimney. The machine gun
+flickered again, and _spat-spat-spat_ came quicker than thought. Other
+bombs smashed in front of him, to right and left of the chimney. He got
+his right foot entangled in what had once been a baby's crib.
+
+There he was, staggering on the very summit of that low mound of
+rubbish, fairly in line with the aim of the machine gun. Something
+seized him by some part of his equipment and jerked him backward. He lit
+on his back and slid a yard, then beheld the face of Hiram Sill staring
+down at him.
+
+"Hit?" asked Hiram.
+
+"Don't think so. No."
+
+"It's a wonder."
+
+Five men from Dick's platoon joined them in the ruins. Together they
+threw seven grenades. The hidden gun ceased fire. Dick scrambled up and
+over the rubbish and around what was left of the shattered chimney that
+masked the machine-gun post. In the dim light he saw sprawled shapes and
+crouching shapes, and one stooped over the machine gun, working swiftly
+to clear it again for action. Dick pistoled the gunner. The three
+survivors of that crew put up their hands. Sergt. Sill disarmed them and
+told them to "beat it" back to the Canadian lines. Fifty yards on they
+found Sacobie and two privates counting prisoners at the mouth of a
+dugout.
+
+"Twenty-nine without a scratch," said Sacobie.
+
+"Find stretchers for them and send them back with our wounded, under
+escort," said Dick. "Put a corporal in charge. Is there a corporal
+here?"
+
+"I'm here, sir."
+
+"You, Judd? Take them back with as many of our wounded as they can
+carry. Two men with you should be escort enough. Hand over the wounded
+and fetch up any grenades and ammunition you can get hold of."
+
+Capt. Smith staggered up to Dick.
+
+"We are through and out the other side!" he gasped. "Get as many of our
+fellows as you can collect quick to stiffen this flank. Dig in beyond
+the houses--in line with the 25th. The colonel is up there somewhere."
+
+He swayed and stumbled against the platoon commander. Dick supported him
+with an arm.
+
+"Hit?" asked Dick.
+
+"Just what you'd notice," said the captain, straightening himself and
+reeling away.
+
+"Go after him and do what you can for him," said Dick to one of his men.
+"Bandage him and then go look for an M. O."
+
+Dick hurried on toward the forward edge of the village, strengthening
+his following as he went. The shelling was still heavy and the noise
+deafening, but the hand-to-hand fighting among the houses had lessened.
+Dick led his men through one wall of a house that had been hit by a
+heavy shell and through the other wall into a little garden. There were
+bricks and tiles and iron shards in that garden; and in the middle of
+it, untouched, a little arbor of grapevines. Dick passed through the
+arbor on his way to the broken wall at the foot of the garden. There
+were two benches in it and a small round table.
+
+Dick went through the arbor in a second, and then he sprang to the
+broken crest of the wall. He had scarcely mounted upon it before
+something red burst close in front of his eyes.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Dick was not astonished to find himself in the old garden at Beaver Dam.
+The lilacs were in flower and full of bees and butterflies. He still
+wore his shrapnel helmet. It felt very uncomfortable, and he tried to
+take it off--but it stuck fast to his head. Even that did not astonish
+him. He saw an arbor of grapevines and entered it and sat down on a
+bench with his elbows on a small round table. He recognized it as the
+arbor he had seen that evening in Courcelette--the evening of September
+15.
+
+"I must have brought it home with me," he reflected. "The war must be
+over."
+
+Flora entered the arbor then and asked him why he was wearing an
+officer's jacket. He thought it queer that she had not heard about his
+commission.
+
+"I was promoted on the Somme--no, it was before that," he began, and
+then everything became dark. "I can't see," he said.
+
+"Don't worry about that," replied a voice that was not Flora's. "Your
+eyes are bandaged for the time being. They'll be as well as ever in a
+few days."
+
+"I must have been dreaming. Where am I--and what is wrong with me?"
+
+"You are in No. 2 Canadian General Hospital and have been dreaming for
+almost a week. But you are doing very well."
+
+"What hit me? And have I all my legs and arms?"
+
+"It must have been a whiz-bang," replied the unknown voice. "You are
+suffering from head wounds that are not so serious as we feared and from
+broken ribs and a few cuts and gashes. You must drink this and stop
+talking."
+
+Dick obediently drank it, whatever it was.
+
+"I wish you could give me some news of the battalion, and then I'd keep
+quiet for a long time," he said.
+
+"Do you want me to open and read this letter that your brother left for
+you two days ago?" asked the Sister.
+
+She read as follows:
+
+"Dear Dick. As your temperature is up and you refuse to know me I am
+leaving this note for you with the charming Sister who seems to be your
+C. O. just now. She tells me that you will be as fit as a fiddle in a
+month or so. Accept my congratulations on your escape and on the battle
+of Courcelette. I have written to Beaver Dam about it and cabled that
+you will live to fight again. Frank Sacobie and that psychological
+sergeant with a D. C. M. and bar are booked for Blighty, to polish up
+for their commissions. I called on them after the fight. They are
+well--but I can't say that they escaped without a scratch, for they both
+looked as if they had been mixing it up with a bunch of wildcats.
+Sacobie has a black eye and doesn't know who or what hit him.
+
+"Do you remember Jim Hammond? He came over to a battalion of this
+division with a draft from England about four months ago. He looked me
+up one day last week and told me a mighty queer story about himself. I
+won't try to repeat it, for I am sure he'll tell it to you himself at
+the first opportunity. He is making good, as far as I can see and hear.
+Pat Hammond has a job in London now. He was badly gassed about a month
+ago. I will get another day's special leave as soon as possible and pay
+you another visit.
+
+"Your affectionate brother, Henry Starkley."
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER IX
+
+                         FRANK SACOBIE OBJECTS
+
+
+WITHIN ten days of the battle of Courcelette, Lieut. Richard Starkley
+was able to see; and twenty days after that he was able to walk. His
+walking at first was an extraordinary thing, and extraordinary was the
+amount of pleasure that he derived from it. With a crutch under one
+shoulder and Sister Gilbert under the other, bandaged and padded from
+hip to neck, and with his battered but entire legs wavering beneath him,
+he crossed the ward that first day without exceeding the speed limit.
+Brother officers in various stages of repair did not refrain from
+expressing their opinions of his performance.
+
+"Try to be back for tea, old son," said a New Zealand major.
+
+"Are those your legs or mine you're fox-trotting with?" asked an English
+subaltern; and an elderly colonel called, "I'll hop out and show you how
+to walk in a minute, if you don't do better than that!"
+
+The colonel laughed, and the inmates of the other beds laughed, and Dick
+and Sister Gilbert laughed, for that, you must know, was a very good
+joke. The humor of the remark lay in the fact that the elderly colonel
+had not a leg to his name.
+
+Day by day Dick improved in pace and gait, and his activities inspired a
+number of his companions to shake an uncertain leg or two. The elderly
+colonel organized contests; and the great free-for-all race twice round
+the ward was one of the notable sporting events of the war.
+
+At last Dick was shipped to Blighty and admitted to a hospital for
+convalescent Canadian officers. There Capt. J. A. Starkley-Davenport
+soon found him. No change that the eye could detect had taken place in
+Jack Davenport. His face was as thin and colorless as when Dick had
+first seen it; his eyes were just as bright, and their glances as kindly
+and intent; his body was as frail and as immaculately garbed. Dick
+wondered how one so frail could exist a week without either breaking
+utterly or gaining in strength.
+
+"You're a wonder, Dick!" exclaimed Davenport.
+
+"It strikes me that you are the wonder," said Dick.
+
+"But they tell me that you stopped a whiz-bang and will be as fit as
+ever, nerve and body, in a little while."
+
+"I stopped bits of it--but I don't think it actually detonated on me.
+All I got was some of the splash. I was lucky!"
+
+"You were indeed," said the other, with a shadow in his eyes. "I was
+lucky, too--though there have been times when I have been fool enough to
+wish that I had been left on the field." Then he straightened his thin
+shoulders and laughed quietly. "But if I had gone west I should have
+missed Frank Sacobie and Hiram Sill. They lunched with me last week and
+have promised to turn up on Sunday. You'll be right for Sunday, Dick,
+and I'll have a pucka party in your honor."
+
+"How are they, and what are they up to?" asked Dick.
+
+"They are at the top of their form, both of them, and up to anything,"
+replied Davenport. "Your Canadian cadet course is the stiffest thing of
+its kind in England, but it doesn't seem to bother those two. Frank is
+smarter than anything the Guards can show and is believed to be a rajah;
+and Hiram writes letters to Washington urging the formation of an
+American division to be attached to the Canadian Corps and suggesting
+his appointment to the command of one of the brigades."
+
+"Those letters must amuse the censors," said Dick with a grin.
+
+"I imagine they do. Washington hasn't answered yet; and so Hiram is
+getting his dander up and is pitching each letter a little higher than
+the one before it. Incidentally, he has a great deal to say to our War
+Office, and his novel suggestions for developing trench warfare seem to
+have awakened a variety of emotions in the brains and livers of a lot of
+worthy _brass hats_."
+
+Dick laughed. "What are his ideas for developing trench warfare?"
+
+"One is the organization of a shot-gun platoon in every battalion. The
+weapon is to be the duck gun, number eight bore, I believe. Hiram
+maintains that, used within a range of one hundred and fifty yards,
+those weapons would be superior to any in repulsing attacks in mass and
+in cleaning up raided trenches. He is a great believer in the deadly and
+demoralizing effects of point-blank fire."
+
+"He is right in that--once you get rid of the parapet."
+
+"He gets rid of the parapet with the point-blank fire of what he calls
+trench cannon--guns, three feet long, mounted so that they can be
+carried along a trench by four men; they are to fire ten- or
+twelve-pound high explosive shells from the front line smack against the
+opposite parapet."
+
+"It sounds right, too; but so many things sound right that work all
+wrong. What are his other schemes?"
+
+"One has to do with a thundering big six-hooked grapnel, with a wire
+cable attached, that is to be shot into the hostile lines from a big
+trench mortar and then winched back by steam. He expects his
+grapnel--give him power enough--to tear out trenches, machine-gun posts
+and battalion headquarters, and bring home all sorts of odds and ends of
+value for identification purposes. Can't you see the brigadier stepping
+out before brekker to take a look at the night's haul?"
+
+"My hat! What did the War Office think of that?"
+
+"An acting assistant something or other of the name of Smythers and the
+rank of major was inspired by it to ask Hiram whether he had ever served
+in France. Hiram put over a twenty-page narrative of his exploits with
+the battalion, with appendixes of maps and notes and extracts from
+brigade and battalion orders, and, so far as I know, the major has not
+yet recovered sufficiently to retaliate."
+
+"Well, I hope Frank Sacobie has left the War Office alone."
+
+"Frank writes nothing and says very little more than that. He seems to
+give all his attention to his kit; but I have a suspicion that he is a
+deep thinker. However that may be, his taste in dress is astonishingly
+good, and his deportment in society is in as good taste as his
+breeches."
+
+"So he has a good time?"
+
+"He is very gay when he comes up to town," answered Davenport.
+
+"He deserves a good time, but he can't get it and at the same time doll
+himself up, even in uniform, on his pay. How does he do it?"
+
+"You have guessed it, Dick."
+
+"I think I have."
+
+"Then there is no need of my saying much about it. I live on one sixth
+of my income. That leaves five sixths for my friends; and often, Dick,
+it is the thought of the spending of the five parts that gives me
+courage to go on keeping life in this useless body with the one part.
+Sometimes a soldier's wife buys food for herself and children, or pays
+the rent, with my money; and the lion's share of the pleasure of that
+transaction is mine. Sometimes a chap on leave spends a fistful of my
+treasury notes on dinners for himself and his girl; and those dinners
+give me more pleasure than the ones I eat myself. I haven't much of a
+stomach of my own now, you know; and I haven't a girl of my own to take
+out to one--even if Wilson would let me go out at night. It is not
+charity. I satisfy my own lost hunger for food through the medium of
+poor people with good appetites: I have my fun and cut a dash in new
+breeches and swagger service jackets through the medium of hard fighting
+fellows from France. I am not apologizing, you understand."
+
+"You needn't," said Dick dryly; and then they both laughed.
+
+Hiram Sill and Frank Sacobie called on Dick at the hospital soon after
+ten o'clock on Sunday morning. They had come up to town the evening
+before. The greetings of the three friends were warm. Sacobie's pleasure
+at the reunion found no voice, but shone in his eyes and thrilled in the
+grip of his hand. Hiram Sill added words to the message of his beaming
+face. He expressed delighted amazement at Dick's appearance.
+
+"I couldn't quite believe it until now," he said. "Neither could you if
+you had seen yourself as we saw you when you were picked up. Nothing the
+matter with your face, except a dimple or two that you weren't born
+with. All your legs and arms still your own. I'd sooner see this than a
+letter from Washington. With your luck you'll live to command the
+battalion."
+
+Dick grinned. His greetings to his friends had been as boyishly
+impulsive and cheery as ever; yet there was something looking out
+through the affection in his eyes that would have puzzled his people in
+New Brunswick if they had seen it. There was a question in the look and
+a hint of anxiety and perhaps the faintest shade of the airs of a fond
+father, a sympathetic judge and a hopeful appraiser. Frank and Hiram
+recognized and accepted it without thought or question. The look was
+nothing more than the shadow of the habit of responsibility and command.
+
+Hiram talked about Washington and the War Office, and discussed his
+grapnel idea with considerable heat. Frank Sacobie took no part in that
+discussion and little in the general conversation. Soon after twelve
+o'clock all three set out in a taxicab for Jack Davenport's house.
+
+The luncheon was successful. The other guests were three women--a cousin
+of Jack's on the Davenport side and her two daughters. The host and
+Hiram Sill both conversed brilliantly. Frank was inspired to make at
+least five separate remarks of some half dozen words each. Dick soon let
+the drift of the general conversation escape him, so interested did he
+become in the girl on his right.
+
+Kathleen Kingston seemed to him a strange mixture of shyness and
+self-possession, of calmness and vivacity. The coloring of her small
+face was wonderfully mobile--so Dick expressed it to himself--and yet
+her eyes were frank, steady and unembarrassed. Her voice was curiously
+low and clear.
+
+Dick was conscious of feeling a vague and unsteady wonder at himself.
+Why this sudden interest in a girl? He had never felt anything of the
+kind before. Had this something to do with the wounds in his head? He
+could not entertain that suggestion seriously. However that might be, he
+felt that his sudden interest in this young person whom he had not so
+much as heard of an hour ago greatly increased his interest in many
+things. He was conscious of a sure friendship for her, as if he had
+known her for years. He knew that this friendship was a more important
+thing to him than his friendships with Hiram Sill and Frank Sacobie--and
+yet those friendships had grown day by day, strengthened week by week
+and stood the test of suffering and peril.
+
+She told him that her father was still in France, but safe now at
+General Headquarters, that her eldest brother had been killed in action
+in 1914, that another was fighting in the East, and that still another
+was a midshipman on the North Sea. Also, she told him that she wanted to
+go to France as a V. A. D., that she had left school six months ago and
+was working five hours every day making bandages and splints, and that
+she was seventeen years old. Those confidences melted Dick's tongue. He
+told her his own age and that he had added a little to it at the time of
+enlisting; he spoke of night and daylight raids and major offensive
+operations in which he had taken part, of the military careers of Henry
+and Peter and of life at Beaver Dam. She seemed to be as keenly
+interested in his confidences as he had been in hers. In the library,
+where coffee was served, Dick continued to cling to his new friend.
+
+The party came to an end at last, leaving Dick in a somewhat scattered
+state of mind. Before leaving with her daughters, Mrs. Kingston gave her
+address and a cordial invitation to make use of it to each of the three.
+Before long Wilson took Jack off to bed. Then Hiram left to keep an
+appointment at the Royal Automobile Club with a captain who knew some
+one at the War Office. That left Frank and Dick with Jack Davenport's
+library to themselves. One place was much the same as another to Dick
+just then. He was again wondering if he could possibly be suffering in
+some subtle and painless way from the wounds in his head. With enquiring
+fingers he felt the spotless bandage that still adorned the top of his
+head.
+
+Sacobie got out of his chair suddenly, with an abruptness of movement
+that was foreign to him, and walked the length of the room and back. He
+halted before Dick and stared down at him keenly for several seconds
+without attracting that battered youth's attention. So he fell again to
+pacing the room, walking lightly and with straight feet, the true Indian
+walk. At last he halted again in front of Dick's chair.
+
+"I am not going back to the battalion," he said.
+
+Dick sat up with a jerk and stared at him.
+
+"I am not going back," repeated Sacobie. "I shall get my commission,
+that is sure; but I shall not be an officer in the battalion."
+
+"Why the mischief not?" exclaimed Dick. "What's the matter with the
+battalion, I'd like to know?"
+
+"Nothing," replied the other. He moved away a few paces, then turned
+back again. "A good battalion. I was a good sergeant there. But I met
+Capt. Dodds, on leave, one day, and we had lunch together at Scott's;
+and he feel pretty good--he felt pretty good--and he talked a lot. He
+told me how some officers and other ranks say the colonel didn't do
+right when he put in my name for cadet course and a commission. You know
+why, Dick. So I don't go back to the infantry with my two stars."
+
+"Do you mean because you are an Indian? That is rot!"
+
+"No, it is good sense. You think about it hard as I have thought about
+it day and night. They don't say I don't know my job. The captain told
+me the colonel was right and everybody knew it when he said I should
+make the best scout officer in the brigade; and the men like me, you
+know that; but the men don't want an Injun for an officer. They are
+white men. I am a Malecite--red. That is right. I don't go back with my
+officer stars."
+
+"Do you mean that you won't take your commission?" asked Dick.
+
+"No. I take it, sure. But not in the 26th."
+
+Dick did not argue. He had never considered his friend's case in that
+light before, but now he knew that Sacobie was right. The
+noncommissioned officers and men would not question Frank's military
+qualifications, his ability or his personal merits. His race was the
+only thing about him to which they objected--and that appeared
+objectionable in him only when they considered him as an officer. As a
+"non-com" he was one of themselves, but as an officer they must consider
+him impersonally as a superior. There was where the New Brunswick
+soldiers would cease to consider their friend and comrade Frank Sacobie
+and see only a member of an inferior race. Their point of view would
+immediately revert to that of the old days before the war, when they
+would have laughed at a Malecite's undertaking to perform any task
+except paddling a canoe.
+
+"Will you transfer to another battalion?" asked Dick, as a result of his
+reflections.
+
+Frank shook his head but made no reply.
+
+"Then to an English battalion?" Dick persisted. "There are dozens that
+would be glad to have you, Frank. A Canadian with your record would not
+have to look far for a job in this war. Jack Davenport's old regiment
+would snap you up quick as a wink, commission and all, I bet a dollar."
+
+The other smiled gravely. "That is right," he said. "Capt. Davenport is
+my friend and knows what I am; but most English people want me to be
+some kind of prince from India. I am myself--a Canadian soldier. I don't
+want to play the monkey. Two-Blanket Sacobie was a big chief, with his
+salmon spear and sometimes nothing to eat. His squaw chopped the wood
+and carried the water. I am not a prince, nor I'm not a monkey. I come
+to the war, and the English people call me rajah; but the Englishman
+come to our country and hire me for a guide in the woods and call me a
+nigger. No, I am myself with what good I have in me. I can do to fight
+the Germans, and that is all I want, Dick. I try to be a gentleman, like
+Peter and Capt. Davenport, and the King will make me an officer. That is
+good. I will join the Royal Flying Corps. Then they will name me for
+what I am by what I do."
+
+Dick gripped Frank's right hand in a hearty clasp of respect and
+admiration.
+
+"You're a brick!" he said. "Jack was right when he said you were a deep
+thinker."
+
+"I got to think deep--deeper than you," said Frank. "I got to think all
+for myself, because my fathers didn't think at all."
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER X
+
+                        DICK OBLIGES HIS FRIEND
+
+
+BOTH Hiram Sill and Frank Sacobie completed the cadet course and passed
+the final examinations. After one last fling at Washington and one more
+astounding suggestion to the War Office, Mr. Sill went back to France
+and his battalion and took command of a platoon. Mr. Sacobie
+transferred, with his new rank, to the Royal Flying Corps and
+immediately began another course of instruction. His brother officers
+decided that he was of a family of Italian origin. He did not bother his
+head about what they thought and applied himself with fervor to
+mastering the science of flying.
+
+Dick recovered his strength steadily. He saw Davenport frequently and
+the Kingstons still more frequently. His friendship with the
+Kingstons--particularly with Kathleen--deepened without a check. No two
+days ever went by consecutively without his seeing one or another of
+that family--usually one.
+
+On a certain Tuesday morning near the end of November he left the
+hospital at ten o'clock in high spirits. He had that morning discarded
+his last crutch and now moved along with the help of two big sticks. The
+dressing on his head was reduced to one thin strip of linen bound
+smoothly round just above the line of his eyebrows. It showed beneath
+his cap and gave him somewhat the air of a cheerful brigand. Though his
+left foot came into contact with the pavement very gingerly, he twirled
+one of the heavy sticks airily every now and again.
+
+Dick found Jack Davenport in the library. A woman and two little girls
+were leaving the library as he entered. The woman was poorly dressed,
+and her eyelids were red from recent tears--but now a look of relief,
+almost of joy, shone in her eyes. She turned on the threshold.
+
+"Bill will have more heart now, sir, for the fighting of his troubles
+and miseries over there," she said. "If I were to stand and talk an
+hour, sir, I couldn't tell you what's in my heart--but I say again, God
+bless you for your great kindness!"
+
+She turned again then and passed Dick, and the butler opened the big
+door and bowed her out of the house with an air of cheery good will.
+
+Capt. Starkley-Davenport sat with his crutch and stick leaning against
+the table. On the cloth within easy reach his check book lay open before
+him. He was dressed with his usual completeness of detail and studied
+simplicity.
+
+"Have you been boarded yet?" asked Jack.
+
+"To-morrow," replied Dick. "All the M. O.'s are friends of mine, so I
+expect to wangle back to my battalion in two weeks."
+
+Jack smiled and shook his head. "Your best friend in the world--or the
+maddest doctor in the army--wouldn't send you back to France on one leg,
+old son. Six weeks is nearer the mark."
+
+"I can make it in two. You watch me."
+
+"And is it still your old battalion, Dick? I have refrained from
+worrying you about it this time, because you deserved a rest--but I'm
+keener than ever to see you in my old outfit; and your third pip is
+there for you to put up on the very day of your transfer."
+
+"I've been thinking about it, Jack--and of course I'd like to do it
+because you want me to. But the colonel wouldn't understand. No one who
+does not know you would understand. People would think I'd done it for
+the step, or that I hadn't hit it off, as an officer, with the old
+crowd. I want to stay, and yet I want to go. I want to fight on, as far
+as my luck will take me, with the 26th, and yet I'd be proud as a
+brigadier to sport three pips with your lot. As for doing something that
+you want me to do--why, to be quite frank with you, there isn't another
+man in the world I'd sooner please than you. Give me a few months more
+in which to decide. Give me until my next leave from France."
+
+Dick had become embarrassed toward the end of his speech, and now he
+looked at Davenport with a red face. The other returned the glance with
+a flush on his thin cheeks.
+
+"Bless you, Dick," he said and looked away. "Your next leave from
+France," he continued. "Six or seven months from now, with luck. They
+don't give me much more than that." Dick stared at his friend.
+
+"I had to send for an M. O. early this morning," Jack went on in a level
+voice. "Wilson did it; he heard me fussing about. By seven o'clock there
+were three of the wisest looking me over--all three familiar with my
+case ever since I got out of hospital. They can't do anything, for
+everything that could be removed--German metal--was dug out long ago. A
+few odds and ends remain, here and there--and one or another of those is
+bound to get me within ten or twelve months. So it will read in the
+_Times_ as 'Died of wounds,' after all."
+
+Dick's face turned white. "Are you joking?" he asked.
+
+"Not I, old son," said the captain, smiling. "I have a sense of
+humor--but it doesn't run quite to that."
+
+"And here you are all dolled up in white spats! Jack, you have a giant's
+heart! And worrying about me and your regiment! Jack, I'll do it! I'll
+transfer. I'll put in my application to-day."
+
+"No. I like your suggestion better. Wait till your next leave from
+France. I have taken a fancy to that idea. You'll come home in six or
+seven months, and you'll ask me to let you put off your decision until
+you return again. Of course I shall have to say yes--and, since I am
+determined to see the Essex badges on you, I'll wait another six or
+seven months. I am stubborn. Between your indecision and my
+stubbornness, the chances are that I'll fool the doctors. That would be
+a joke, if you like!"
+
+Dick hobbled round the table and grasped Jack's hand.
+
+"Done!" he exclaimed. "I am with you, Jack. We'll play that game for all
+it is worth. But you didn't seriously believe what the doctors said, did
+you?"
+
+"Yes, until five minutes ago."
+
+"Two years ago they said you would be right as wheat in six months; and
+now they say you will be dead in a year. If they think they're
+prophets--they are clean off their job. Would they bet money on it? I
+don't think! One year! Fifty years would have sounded almost as knowing
+and a good sight more likely."
+
+Dick stayed to luncheon, and he remained at the table after Wilson had
+taken Jack away to lie down. Wilson came back within fifteen minutes and
+found the Canadian subaltern where he had left him.
+
+"Sir, I am anxious about Capt. Jack," he said.
+
+"Why do you say that?" asked Dick.
+
+"Sir Peter Bayle and two other medical gentlemen of the highest standing
+warned him this very morning, sir, that he was only one year more for
+this world; and now he is singing, sir,--a thing he has not done in
+months,--and a song which runs, sir, with your permission, 'All the boys
+and girls I chance to meet say, Who's that coming down the street? Why,
+it's Milly; she's a daisy'--and so on, sir. I fear his wounds have
+affected his mind, sir."
+
+"Wilson, I know that song and approve of it," said Dick. "If Sir Peter
+Bayle told you, in November, 1916, that you were to die in November,
+1917, of wounds received in 1914, should you worry? Nix to that! You
+would seriously suspect that Sir Peter had his diagnosis of your case
+mixed up in his high-priced noddle with Buchan's History of the War; and
+if you are the man I think you are, you, too, would sing."
+
+"I thank you, Mr. Richard. You fill my heart with courage, sir," said
+Wilson.
+
+Dick reached the Kingston house at four o'clock and was shown as usual
+into the drawing-room. The ladies were not there, but an officer whom
+Dick had never seen before stood on the hearthrug with his back to the
+fire. He wore the crown and star of a lieutenant colonel on his
+shoulders, a wound stripe on his left sleeve, the red tabs of the
+general staff on his collar, on his right breast the blue ribbon of the
+Royal Humane Society's medal and on his left breast the ribbons of the
+D. S. O., of the Queen's and the King's South African medals, of several
+Indian medals and of the Legion of Honor. His figure was slight and of
+little more than the medium height. A monocle without a cord shone in
+his right eye, and his air was amiable and alert. Dick halted on his two
+sticks and said, "I beg your pardon, sir."
+
+The other flashed a smile, advanced quickly and in two motions put Dick
+into a deep chair and took possession of the sticks. Then he shook the
+visitor's hand heartily.
+
+"Glad to see you," he said. "There is no mistaking you. You are
+Kathleen's Canadian subaltern. I am Kathleen's father."
+
+Dick knew that there were plenty of suitable things to say in reply, but
+for the life of him he could not think of one of them. So he said
+nothing, but returned the colonel's smile.
+
+"Don't be bashful, Dick," continued the other. "I was a boy myself not
+so long ago as you think--but I hadn't seen a shot fired in anger when I
+was your age. It's amazing. I wonder what weight of metal has gone over
+your head, not to mention what has hit you and fallen short. Tons and
+tons, I suppose. It's an astounding war, to my mind. Don't you find it
+so?"
+
+"Yes, sir," replied Dick.
+
+"And you are right," continued the other. "I wish I were your age, so as
+to see it more clearly. Stupendous!"
+
+At that moment Mrs. Kingston and the two girls entered. It had been
+Dick's and Kathleen's intention to go out to tea; but the colonel upset
+that plan by saying that he was very anxious to hear Dick talk. So they
+remained at home for tea--and the colonel did all the talking. Dick
+agreed with everything he said about the war, however, and then he said
+that Dick was right--so it really made no difference after all which of
+them actually said the things.
+
+During the ten days of the colonel's leave he and Dick became firm
+friends. They knocked about town together every morning, often lunched
+with Jack Davenport and every afternoon and evening took Mrs. Kingston
+and the girls out. Dick dined at home with the family on the colonel's
+last night of leave. After dinner, when the others left the table, the
+colonel detained Dick with a wink.
+
+"I won't keep you from Kathleen ten minutes, my boy," he said. "I want
+to tell you, in case I don't see you again for a long time,--meetings
+between soldiers are uncertain things, Dick,--that this little affair
+between you and my daughter has done me good to see. You are both
+babies, so don't take it too seriously. Take it happily. Whatever may
+happen in the future, you two children will have something very
+beautiful and romantic and innocent to look back at in this war. Though
+you should live to be ninety and marry a girl from Assiniboia, yet you
+will always remember this old town with pleasure. If, on the other hand,
+you should continue in your present vein--that is, continue to feel like
+this after you grow up--that it is absolutely necessary to your
+happiness to have tea with my daughter every day--well, good luck to
+you! I can't say more than that, my boy. But in the meantime, be happy."
+
+Then he shook Dick vigorously by the hand, patted his shoulder and
+pushed him out of the room.
+
+Dick handled the medical officers so ably that he and his transportation
+were ready for France on New Year's Day. The Kingstons saw him off. He
+found a seat in a first-class compartment and deposited his haversack in
+it. Then the four stood on the platform and tried in vain to think of
+something to say. Even Mrs. Kingston was silent. Officers of all ranks
+of every branch of the service, with their friends and relatives,
+crowded the long platform. Late arrivals bundled in and out of the
+carriages, looking for unclaimed seats. Guards looked at their big
+silver watches and requested the gentlemen to take their seats. Then
+Mrs. Kingston kissed Dick; then Mary kissed him; and then, lifted to a
+state of recklessness, he kissed Kathleen on her trembling lips. He saw
+tears quivering in her eyes.
+
+"When I come back--next leave--will it be the same?" he asked.
+
+She bowed her head, and the tears spilled over and glistened on her
+cheeks. Standing in the doorway of the compartment, Dick saluted, then
+turned, trod on the toes of a sapper major, moved heavily from there to
+the spurred boots of an artillery colonel and sat down violently and
+blindly on his lumpy haversack. The five other occupants of the
+compartment glanced from Dick to the group on the platform.
+
+      [Illustration: "STANDING IN THE DOORWAY OF THE COMPARTMENT,
+                            DICK SALUTED."]
+
+"We all know it's a rotten war, old son," said the gunner colonel and,
+stooping, rubbed the toes of his outraged boots with his gloves.
+
+Dick found many old faces replaced by new in the battalion. Enemy
+snipers, shell fire, sickness and promotion had been at work. Dick acted
+as assistant adjutant for a couple of weeks and was then posted to a
+company as second in command and promised his step in rank at the
+earliest opportunity. In the same company was Lieut. Hiram Sill's
+platoon. Hiram, busy as ever, had distinguished himself several times
+since his return and was in a fair way to be recommended for a Military
+Cross.
+
+The commander of the company was a middle-aged, amiable person who had
+been worked so hard during the past year that he had nothing left to
+carry on with except courage. At sight of Dick he rejoiced, for Dick had
+a big reputation. He took off his boots and belt, retired to his
+blankets and told his batman to wake him when the war was over. The
+relief was too much for him; it had come too late. The more he rested
+the worse he felt, and at last the medical officer sent him out on a
+stretcher. Fever and a general breakdown held him at the base for
+several weeks, and then he was shipped to Blighty. So Dick got a company
+and his third star, and no one begrudged him the one or the other.
+
+The Canadian Corps worked all winter in preparation for its great spring
+task. The Germans fortified and intrenched and mightily garrisoned along
+all the great ridge of Vimy, harassed the preparing legions with shells
+and bombs and looked contemptuously out and down upon us from their
+strong vantage points. Others had failed to wrest Vimy from them. But
+night and day the Canadians went on with their preparations.
+
+Word that the United States of America had declared war on Germany
+reached the toilers before Vimy on April 7; and within the week there
+came a night of gunfire that rocked the earth and tore the air. With
+morning the gunfire ceased, only to break forth again in lesser volume
+as the jumping barrages were laid along the ridge; and then, in a storm
+of wind and snow, the battalions went over on a five-division front,
+company after company, wave after wave, riflemen, bombers and Lewis
+gunners. The Canadians were striking after their winter of drudgery.
+
+One of our men, a Yankee by birth, went over that morning with a
+miniature Stars and Stripes tied to his bayonet. We cleared out the Huns
+and took the ridge; and for days the water that filled the shell holes
+and mine craters over that ground was red with Canadian blood, and the
+plank roads were slippery with it from the passing of our wounded.
+
+Dick went through that fight in front of his company and came out of it
+speechless with exhaustion, but unhit. Hiram Sill survived it with his
+arm in a sling. Maj. Henry Starkley was wounded again, again not
+seriously. Maj. Patrick Hammond was killed, and Corp. Jim Hammond was
+carried back the next day with a torn scalp and a crushed knee.
+
+On the tenth day after that battle Lieut. Hiram Sill and his company
+commander were the recipients of extraordinary news. Mr. Sill was
+requested to visit the colonel without loss of time. He turned up within
+the minute and saluted with his left hand.
+
+"You are wanted back in the U. S. A., Hiram, for instructional
+purposes," said the colonel, looking over a mess of papers at his elbow.
+"You don't have to go if you don't want to. Here it is--and to be made
+out in triplicate, of course."
+
+Hiram examined the papers.
+
+"And here is something else that will interest you," continued the
+colonel. "News for you and Dick Starkley. You have your M. C."
+
+Hiram's eyes shone.
+
+"And Dick seems to have hooked the same for his work on the Somme--and I
+had given up all hope of that coming through. I recommended him for a D.
+S. O. last week. The way these recommendations for awards are handled
+beats me. They put them all into a hat and then chuck the hat out of the
+window, I guess, and whatever recommendations are picked up in the
+street and returned through the post are approved and acted upon. I know
+a chap--come back here!"
+
+Hiram turned at the door of the hut.
+
+"Do you intend to accept that job?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"You have a choice between going over to the American army with your
+rank or simply being seconded from the Canadians for that duty. What do
+you mean to do?"
+
+"Seconded, sir. I am an American citizen clear through, colonel, but I
+have worn this cut of uniform too long to change it in this war."
+
+Hiram found Dick in his billet, reading a letter. Dick received the news
+of the awards and of Hiram's appointment very quietly.
+
+"Jack Davenport has gone west," he said.
+
+Hiram sat down and stared at Dick without a word.
+
+"This letter is from Kathleen," continued Dick. "She says Jack went out
+on Monday to visit some of the people he helps. He had taken on six more
+widows and seven more babies since the Vimy show. On his way home toward
+evening he and Wilson were outside the Blackfriars underground station,
+looking for a taxi, when a lorry took a skid fair at an old woman and
+little boy who were just making the curb. Wilson swears that Jack jumped
+from the curb as if there were nothing wrong with him, landed fair in
+front of the lorry, knocked the old woman and kid out from under, but
+fell before he could get clear himself."
+
+"Killed?"
+
+"Instantly."
+
+Hiram gazed down at his muddy boots, and Dick continued to regard the
+letter in his hand.
+
+"Can you beat it?" said Hiram at last.
+
+Dick got up and paced about the little room, busy with his thoughts.
+Finally he spoke.
+
+"Sacobie is flying, and you are booked for the States, and I am going to
+transfer to Jack's old lot," he said slowly.
+
+Hiram looked up at him, but did not speak.
+
+"Jack wanted me to," continued Dick. "Well, why not? It's the same old
+army and the same old war. A fellow should make an effort to oblige a
+man like Jack--dead or alive." He was silent for several seconds, then
+went on: "Henry has been offered a staff job in London. Peter is safe.
+Sacobie has brought down four Boche machines already. What have you
+heard about Jim Hammond?"
+
+"It's Blighty for him--and then Canada. He'll never in the world bend
+that leg again."
+
+For a while Dick continued to pace back and forth across the muddy floor
+in silence.
+
+"We are scattering, Old Psychology," he said. "This war is a great
+scatterer--but there are some things it can't touch. You'll be homesick
+at your new job, Hiram,--and I'll be homesick with the Essex bunch, I
+suppose,--but there are some things that make it all seem worth the
+rotten misery of it." He glanced down at Kathleen's letter, then put it
+into his pocket. "Jack Davenport, for one," he ended.
+
+"A soldier and a gentlemen," said Hiram.
+
+                                THE END
+
+
+
+
+                           Transcriber Notes:
+
+Passages in italics were indicated by _underscores_.
+
+Passages in bold were indicated by =equal signs=.
+
+Small caps were replaced with ALL CAPS.
+
+Throughout the dialogues, there were words used to mimic accents of
+the speakers. Those words were retained as-is.
+
+The illustrations have been moved so that they do not break up
+paragraphs and so that they are next to the text they illustrate. Thus
+the page number of the illustration might not match the page number in
+the List of Illustrations, and the order of illustrations may not be the
+same in the List of Illustrations and in the book.
+
+Errors in punctuation and inconsistent hyphenation were not corrected
+unless otherwise noted.
+
+On page 142, "comissions" was replaced with "commissions".
+
+On page 243, "harrassed" was replaced with "harassed".
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Fighting Starkleys, by 
+Theodore Goodridge Roberts
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 44185 ***