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