WITHIN ten days of the battle of Courcelette, Lieut. Richard Starkley was able to see; and twenty days after that he was able to walk. His walking at first was an extraordinary thing, and extraordinary was the amount of pleasure that he derived from it. With a crutch under one shoulder and Sister Gilbert under the other, bandaged and padded from hip to neck, and with his battered but entire legs wavering beneath him, he crossed the ward that first day without exceeding the speed limit. Brother officers in various stages of repair did not refrain from expressing their opinions of his performance.

"Try to be back for tea, old son," said a New Zealand major.

"Are those your legs or mine you're fox-trotting with?" asked an English subaltern; and an elderly colonel called, "I'll hop out and show you how to walk in a minute, if you don't do better than that!"

The colonel laughed, and the inmates of the other beds laughed, and Dick and Sister Gilbert laughed, for that, you must know, was a very good joke. The humor of the remark lay in the fact that the elderly colonel had not a leg to his name.

Day by day Dick improved in pace and gait, and his activities inspired a number of his companions to shake an uncertain leg or two. The elderly colonel organized contests; and the great free-for-all race twice round the ward was one of the notable sporting events of the war.

At last Dick was shipped to Blighty and admitted to a hospital for convalescent Canadian officers. There Capt. J. A. Starkley-Davenport soon found him. No change that the eye could detect had taken place in Jack Davenport. His face was as thin and colorless as when Dick had first seen it; his eyes were just as bright, and their glances as kindly and intent; his body was as frail and as immaculately garbed. Dick wondered how one so frail could exist a week without either breaking utterly or gaining in strength.

"You're a wonder, Dick!" exclaimed Davenport.

"It strikes me that you are the wonder," said Dick.

"But they tell me that you stopped a whiz-bang and will be as fit as ever, nerve and body, in a little while."

"I stopped bits of it—but I don't think it actually detonated on me. All I got was some of the splash. I was lucky!"

"You were indeed," said the other, with a shadow in his eyes. "I was lucky, too—though there have been times when I have been fool enough to wish that I had been left on the field." Then he straightened his thin shoulders and laughed quietly. "But if I had gone west I should have missed Frank Sacobie and Hiram Sill. They lunched with me last week and have promised to turn up on Sunday. You'll be right for Sunday, Dick, and I'll have a pucka party in your honor."

"How are they, and what are they up to?" asked Dick.

"They are at the top of their form, both of them, and up to anything," replied Davenport. "Your Canadian cadet course is the stiffest thing of its kind in England, but it doesn't seem to bother those two. Frank is smarter than anything the Guards can show and is believed to be a rajah; and Hiram writes letters to Washington urging the formation of an American division to be attached to the Canadian Corps and suggesting his appointment to the command of one of the brigades."

"Those letters must amuse the censors," said Dick with a grin.

"I imagine they do. Washington hasn't answered yet; and so Hiram is getting his dander up and is pitching each letter a little higher than the one before it. Incidentally, he has a great deal to say to our War Office, and his novel suggestions for developing trench warfare seem to have awakened a variety of emotions in the brains and livers of a lot of worthy brass hats."

Dick laughed. "What are his ideas for developing trench warfare?"

"One is the organization of a shot-gun platoon in every battalion. The weapon is to be the duck gun, number eight bore, I believe. Hiram maintains that, used within a range of one hundred and fifty yards, those weapons would be superior to any in repulsing attacks in mass and in cleaning up raided trenches. He is a great believer in the deadly and demoralizing effects of point-blank fire."

"He is right in that—once you get rid of the parapet."

"He gets rid of the parapet with the point-blank fire of what he calls trench cannon—guns, three feet long, mounted so that they can be carried along a trench by four men; they are to fire ten- or twelve-pound high explosive shells from the front line smack against the opposite parapet."

"It sounds right, too; but so many things sound right that work all wrong. What are his other schemes?"

"One has to do with a thundering big six-hooked grapnel, with a wire cable attached, that is to be shot into the hostile lines from a big trench mortar and then winched back by steam. He expects his grapnel—give him power enough—to tear out trenches, machine-gun posts and battalion headquarters, and bring home all sorts of odds and ends of value for identification purposes. Can't you see the brigadier stepping out before brekker to take a look at the night's haul?"

"My hat! What did the War Office think of that?"

"An acting assistant something or other of the name of Smythers and the rank of major was inspired by it to ask Hiram whether he had ever served in France. Hiram put over a twenty-page narrative of his exploits with the battalion, with appendixes of maps and notes and extracts from brigade and battalion orders, and, so far as I know, the major has not yet recovered sufficiently to retaliate."

"Well, I hope Frank Sacobie has left the War Office alone."

"Frank writes nothing and says very little more than that. He seems to give all his attention to his kit; but I have a suspicion that he is a deep thinker. However that may be, his taste in dress is astonishingly good, and his deportment in society is in as good taste as his breeches."

"So he has a good time?"

"He is very gay when he comes up to town," answered Davenport.

"He deserves a good time, but he can't get it and at the same time doll himself up, even in uniform, on his pay. How does he do it?"

"You have guessed it, Dick."

"I think I have."

"Then there is no need of my saying much about it. I live on one sixth of my income. That leaves five sixths for my friends; and often, Dick, it is the thought of the spending of the five parts that gives me courage to go on keeping life in this useless body with the one part. Sometimes a soldier's wife buys food for herself and children, or pays the rent, with my money; and the lion's share of the pleasure of that transaction is mine. Sometimes a chap on leave spends a fistful of my treasury notes on dinners for himself and his girl; and those dinners give me more pleasure than the ones I eat myself. I haven't much of a stomach of my own now, you know; and I haven't a girl of my own to take out to one—even if Wilson would let me go out at night. It is not charity. I satisfy my own lost hunger for food through the medium of poor people with good appetites: I have my fun and cut a dash in new breeches and swagger service jackets through the medium of hard fighting fellows from France. I am not apologizing, you understand."

"You needn't," said Dick dryly; and then they both laughed.

Hiram Sill and Frank Sacobie called on Dick at the hospital soon after ten o'clock on Sunday morning. They had come up to town the evening before. The greetings of the three friends were warm. Sacobie's pleasure at the reunion found no voice, but shone in his eyes and thrilled in the grip of his hand. Hiram Sill added words to the message of his beaming face. He expressed delighted amazement at Dick's appearance.

"I couldn't quite believe it until now," he said. "Neither could you if you had seen yourself as we saw you when you were picked up. Nothing the matter with your face, except a dimple or two that you weren't born with. All your legs and arms still your own. I'd sooner see this than a letter from Washington. With your luck you'll live to command the battalion."

Dick grinned. His greetings to his friends had been as boyishly impulsive and cheery as ever; yet there was something looking out through the affection in his eyes that would have puzzled his people in New Brunswick if they had seen it. There was a question in the look and a hint of anxiety and perhaps the faintest shade of the airs of a fond father, a sympathetic judge and a hopeful appraiser. Frank and Hiram recognized and accepted it without thought or question. The look was nothing more than the shadow of the habit of responsibility and command.

Hiram talked about Washington and the War Office, and discussed his grapnel idea with considerable heat. Frank Sacobie took no part in that discussion and little in the general conversation. Soon after twelve o'clock all three set out in a taxicab for Jack Davenport's house.

The luncheon was successful. The other guests were three women—a cousin of Jack's on the Davenport side and her two daughters. The host and Hiram Sill both conversed brilliantly. Frank was inspired to make at least five separate remarks of some half dozen words each. Dick soon let the drift of the general conversation escape him, so interested did he become in the girl on his right.

Kathleen Kingston seemed to him a strange mixture of shyness and self-possession, of calmness and vivacity. The coloring of her small face was wonderfully mobile—so Dick expressed it to himself—and yet her eyes were frank, steady and unembarrassed. Her voice was curiously low and clear.

Dick was conscious of feeling a vague and unsteady wonder at himself. Why this sudden interest in a girl? He had never felt anything of the kind before. Had this something to do with the wounds in his head? He could not entertain that suggestion seriously. However that might be, he felt that his sudden interest in this young person whom he had not so much as heard of an hour ago greatly increased his interest in many things. He was conscious of a sure friendship for her, as if he had known her for years. He knew that this friendship was a more important thing to him than his friendships with Hiram Sill and Frank Sacobie—and yet those friendships had grown day by day, strengthened week by week and stood the test of suffering and peril.

She told him that her father was still in France, but safe now at General Headquarters, that her eldest brother had been killed in action in 1914, that another was fighting in the East, and that still another was a midshipman on the North Sea. Also, she told him that she wanted to go to France as a V. A. D., that she had left school six months ago and was working five hours every day making bandages and splints, and that she was seventeen years old. Those confidences melted Dick's tongue. He told her his own age and that he had added a little to it at the time of enlisting; he spoke of night and daylight raids and major offensive operations in which he had taken part, of the military careers of Henry and Peter and of life at Beaver Dam. She seemed to be as keenly interested in his confidences as he had been in hers. In the library, where coffee was served, Dick continued to cling to his new friend.

The party came to an end at last, leaving Dick in a somewhat scattered state of mind. Before leaving with her daughters, Mrs. Kingston gave her address and a cordial invitation to make use of it to each of the three. Before long Wilson took Jack off to bed. Then Hiram left to keep an appointment at the Royal Automobile Club with a captain who knew some one at the War Office. That left Frank and Dick with Jack Davenport's library to themselves. One place was much the same as another to Dick just then. He was again wondering if he could possibly be suffering in some subtle and painless way from the wounds in his head. With enquiring fingers he felt the spotless bandage that still adorned the top of his head.

Sacobie got out of his chair suddenly, with an abruptness of movement that was foreign to him, and walked the length of the room and back. He halted before Dick and stared down at him keenly for several seconds without attracting that battered youth's attention. So he fell again to pacing the room, walking lightly and with straight feet, the true Indian walk. At last he halted again in front of Dick's chair.

"I am not going back to the battalion," he said.

Dick sat up with a jerk and stared at him.

"I am not going back," repeated Sacobie. "I shall get my commission, that is sure; but I shall not be an officer in the battalion."

"Why the mischief not?" exclaimed Dick. "What's the matter with the battalion, I'd like to know?"

"Nothing," replied the other. He moved away a few paces, then turned back again. "A good battalion. I was a good sergeant there. But I met Capt. Dodds, on leave, one day, and we had lunch together at Scott's; and he feel pretty good—he felt pretty good—and he talked a lot. He told me how some officers and other ranks say the colonel didn't do right when he put in my name for cadet course and a commission. You know why, Dick. So I don't go back to the infantry with my two stars."

"Do you mean because you are an Indian? That is rot!"

"No, it is good sense. You think about it hard as I have thought about it day and night. They don't say I don't know my job. The captain told me the colonel was right and everybody knew it when he said I should make the best scout officer in the brigade; and the men like me, you know that; but the men don't want an Injun for an officer. They are white men. I am a Malecite—red. That is right. I don't go back with my officer stars."

"Do you mean that you won't take your commission?" asked Dick.

"No. I take it, sure. But not in the 26th."

Dick did not argue. He had never considered his friend's case in that light before, but now he knew that Sacobie was right. The noncommissioned officers and men would not question Frank's military qualifications, his ability or his personal merits. His race was the only thing about him to which they objected—and that appeared objectionable in him only when they considered him as an officer. As a "non-com" he was one of themselves, but as an officer they must consider him impersonally as a superior. There was where the New Brunswick soldiers would cease to consider their friend and comrade Frank Sacobie and see only a member of an inferior race. Their point of view would immediately revert to that of the old days before the war, when they would have laughed at a Malecite's undertaking to perform any task except paddling a canoe.

"Will you transfer to another battalion?" asked Dick, as a result of his reflections.

Frank shook his head but made no reply.

"Then to an English battalion?" Dick persisted. "There are dozens that would be glad to have you, Frank. A Canadian with your record would not have to look far for a job in this war. Jack Davenport's old regiment would snap you up quick as a wink, commission and all, I bet a dollar."

The other smiled gravely. "That is right," he said. "Capt. Davenport is my friend and knows what I am; but most English people want me to be some kind of prince from India. I am myself—a Canadian soldier. I don't want to play the monkey. Two-Blanket Sacobie was a big chief, with his salmon spear and sometimes nothing to eat. His squaw chopped the wood and carried the water. I am not a prince, nor I'm not a monkey. I come to the war, and the English people call me rajah; but the Englishman come to our country and hire me for a guide in the woods and call me a nigger. No, I am myself with what good I have in me. I can do to fight the Germans, and that is all I want, Dick. I try to be a gentleman, like Peter and Capt. Davenport, and the King will make me an officer. That is good. I will join the Royal Flying Corps. Then they will name me for what I am by what I do."

Dick gripped Frank's right hand in a hearty clasp of respect and admiration.

"You're a brick!" he said. "Jack was right when he said you were a deep thinker."

"I got to think deep—deeper than you," said Frank. "I got to think all for myself, because my fathers didn't think at all."