class="indent">"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