the train.

The officers gathered on the back of the last car and watched the white faces of the crowd dwindle to pin points, and then a curve hid town and people alike from view.

It was less lonely inside the car, where were officers of another battalion whose men were in the fore part of the train. The elder men talked in low, serious tones as befitted those who knew something of what lay before them.

To Lyte and the younger subalterns it seemed as though they were on the threshold of life's Great Adventure, as indeed they were.

But they were not facing a war of chivalrous deeds such as they imagined.

Alas for our ideals! war now appears in its true light, as the game of commerce played on a larger scale with human lives as pawns in the place of dollars and cents!

And as for chivalry, how can it live in the midst of machine-guns, asphyxiating gases, and liquid flames?

CHAPTER IV

VAL CARTIER

A more picturesque site for a camp than Val Cartier could hardly be imagined, situated as it was among the foothills of the Laurentian mountains along the banks of the Jacques Cartier River.

A gentle slope, dry sandy soil, and plenty of water made it ideal from a sanitary standpoint, and with the ample manœuvre grounds available, the shower sprays, and running water piped throughout the camp, Val Cartier was the peer of any camp the Canadians have yet seen.

But when we tumbled out of the train in the early morning there was nothing to show the existence of a military camp except one lonely bell-tent guarding the railway platform and a pair of wheel-tracks disappearing in the clumps of second-growth cedars.

Following these tracks we came upon an opening on either side of the road in which men laboured at clearing away the underbrush. The vivid colours of the jerseys in which they were clad told the world that those on the one side were students from McGill, while those on the other clad in blue and white represented 'Varsity (Toronto). Further along the red, yellow, and blue of Queen's University showed where their University Field Company was at work. The same spirit of competition that existed on the football field now kept the three units working at top speed.

A patch of land that one day was covered with cedars would next day be bare of all but stumps, the brushwood blazing merrily in huge fires. Next day the stumps in turn would be gone and by evening the new area would be covered with tents.

Already some hundreds of tents had been erected on each side of what was to be the main street of the camp. A ditching machine pantingly laboured on one side of the road and dug as much in a day as fifty men. In the ditch already made on the other side pipes had been laid and running water was available.

Showers had been erected for each company, and, most welcome of all, the advance party greeted us with a flourish of dirty aprons and ladles and the joyful cry of "skillet."

During the afternoon greatcoats were received, and very necessary they were, for when we rose next morning ice had formed in our pails, and the trees on the mountain side were beginning to turn red.

Long before we left the mountain sides were a wild revel of colour, reds, yellows, and browns predominating, where the frost had touched the leaves. Particularly brilliant were the shot-scarred trees that stood on the slopes forming the stop-butts of the rifle-ranges.

These ranges are worthy of special mention, comprising as they did targets for fifteen hundred men.

The method of construction was simplicity itself. A deep ditch had been dug and the earth thrown up like an ordinary trench to protect the marker. Strong posts had been erected about six feet apart to carry the targets, which took the form of squares of pulpboard mounted on a lever pivoted to the upright. The weight of the target held it behind the butt, and it was brought into view by pulling a short piece of rope attached to the free end of the lever.

Crude as this arrangement was, it served the purpose admirably, and daily we trudged out toward the mountain, around the foot of which this trench wound much as the German line does around the foot of Messines Hill, and fired ragged volleys into the re-echoing hill sides.

In only two ways could the training have been improved, and neither of these two was practicable under the circumstances. Better checking of the target registers and fire control would have necessitated officers trained better in musketry, and such officers were not available, and had the latest pattern ammunition in clips been obtainable instead of the old square-toed bullet wrapped in paper packages, more practice in rapid fire—the English Army's Mad Minute—could have been had.

But Sam Hughes had to work with the material at hand, and from an army of men who had, in the majority, never fired a service rifle in their lives, he formed an army that he described as being "the finest shooting army in the world."

Drill was not by any means neglected, and there were few idle hours in camp, even moonlight nights being eagerly seized upon by battalion commanders for extra work.

Daily fresh drafts from battalions arrived and were formed into new composite battalions, and daily the proportion of men in old civilian clothing grew less.

Two reviews were held, after one of which the Honourable Sam had many things to say to the officers. He told them that every officer, no matter what political gender, would have an equal chance in the great struggle for a place on the contingent, for instead of the one thousand officers asked for some fifteen hundred officers were actually in camp.

Sam spake yet other homilies to the officers, and his address, delivered from a mound on which he and his staff were drawn up, was irreverently referred to around camp as the "Sermon on the Mount." A story is also told that one of his aides suggested that all could not hear him. "That's all right," he is credited with replying; "they can all see me!"

However, his words had a beneficial effect on all who heard them, and when two weeks later another review was held and His Royal Highness the Duke of Connaught inspected the contingent it was announced that the First Canadian Division was ready to proceed over seas.

Begbie Lyte and other signalling officers were summoned over to headquarters one day and received mysterious instructions from an officer in naval uniform.

Two days later, on the 22nd of September, the —— Battalion embarked on a troopship, and after a wild evening's pleasure at the Chateau Frontenac the writer, Begbie Lyte, and some others sought the narrow confines of the ship. The rhythmic throb of the propeller woke them some hours later as the ship moved out to anchor in mid stream.

CHAPTER V

THE CONVOY

For two days we lay at anchor opposite the Citadel of Quebec and bemoaned the fate that separated us from the twinkling lights of the Chateau Frontenac and the Dufferin Terrace. Then one evening the throb of the propeller drew the crowd from the saloons to the decks and we watched the lights fade away in the night. From the forts long fingers of light followed us down stream, and blinking lights here and there sent us farewell greetings. Up on the bridge we could hear the clatter of the signal lamps, and the sooty odour of petroleum smoke hung in the calm air around us. Begbie Lyte was on the job and became an important unit in our little company. Through him alone would we get news of the outside world for some weeks to come.

Nearing Father Point, below Quebec, where normally the pilot is dropped or taken on when one is leaving or proceeding to Canada, the ship's officers pointed out a small twinkling light that marked the grave of the ill-fated Empress of Ireland. We had seen the collier Storstadt that sent her to her doom while at anchor off