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,