THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS

"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

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