AFTER Jim Hammond went away from Beaver Dam he wrote to Mrs. Starkley from Toronto, saying that he had enlisted in a new infantry battalion and that all was well with him. That was the last news from him, or of him, to be received at Beaver Dam for many months.

The war held and crushed and sweated on the western front. Every day found the Canadians in the grinding and perilous toil of it. In April, 1916, the Second Canadian Division held the ground about St. Eloi against terrific onslaughts. Then and there were fought those desperate actions known as the Battles of the Craters. Hiram Sill, D. C. M., now a sergeant, received a wound that put him out of action for nearly two months. Dick Starkley was buried twice, once beneath the lip of one of the craters as it returned to earth after a jump into the air, and again in his dugout. No bones were broken, but he had to rest for three days.

Other Canadian divisions moved into the Ypres salient in April—back to their first field of glory of the year before. That salient of terrible fame, advanced round the battered city of Ypres like a blunt spearhead driven into the enemy's positions, will live for centuries after its trenches are leveled. British soldiers have fallen in their tens of thousands in and beyond and on the flanks of that city of destruction. From three sides the German guns flailed it through four desperate years. Masses of German infantry surged up and broke against its torn edges, German gas drenched it, liquid fire scorched it, and mines blasted it. Now and again the edge of that salient was bent inward a little for a day or a week; but in those four years no German set foot in that city of heroic ruins except as a prisoner.

The 26th Battalion celebrated Dominion Day—July 1st—by raiding a convenient point of the German front line. The assault was made by a party of twenty-five "other ranks" commanded by two junior officers. It was supported by the fire of our heavy field guns and heavy and medium trench mortars.

Sergts. Frank Sacobie and Hiram Sill were of the party, but Dick Starkley was not. Dick could not be spared for it from his duties with his platoon, for he was in acting command during the enforced absence of Lieut. Smith, who was suffering at a base hospital from a combination of gas and fever. The men from New Brunswick were observed by the garrison of the threatened trench while they were still on the wrong side of the inner line of hostile wire, and a heavy but wild fire was opened on them with rifles and machine guns. But the raiders did not pause. They passed through the last entanglement, entered the trench, killed a number of the enemy and collected considerable material for identification. Their casualties were few, and no wound was of a serious nature. Hiram Sill was dizzy and bleeding freely, but cheerful. One small fragment of a bomb had cut open his right cheek, and another had nicked his left shoulder. Sacobie carried him home on his back.

It was a little affair, remarkable only as a new way of celebrating Dominion Day, and differed only in minor details from hundreds of other little bursts of aggressive activity on that front.

Later in the month a Distinguished Service Order, two Military Crosses, four Distinguished Conduct Medals and five Military Medals were awarded to the battalion in recognition of its work about St. Eloi. Dick Starkley and Frank Sacobie each drew a D. C. M. A few days after that Lieut. Smith returned from Blighty and took back the command of his platoon from Dick; and at the same time he informed Dick that he was earmarked for a commission.

The Canadians began their march from the Ypres salient to the Somme on September 1, 1916. They marched cheerfully, glad of a change and hoping for the best. The weather was fine, and the towns and villages through which they passed seemed to them pleasant places full of friendly people. They were going to fight on a new front; and, as became soldiers, it was their firm belief that any change would be for the better.

On the 8th of September, while on the march, Dick Starkley was gazetted a lieutenant of Canadian Infantry. Mr. Smith found his third star in the same gazette, and Dick took the platoon. Henry visited the battalion a few days later and presented to the new lieutenant an old uniform that would do very well until the London tailors were given a chance. Dick was a proud soldier that day; and an opportunity of showing his new dignity to the enemy soon occurred. That opportunity was the famous battle of Courcelette.

From one o'clock of the afternoon of September 14 until four o'clock the next morning our heavy guns and howitzers belabored with high explosive shells the fortified sugar refinery and its strong trenches and the village of Courcelette beyond. Then for an hour the big guns were silent. The battalions of the Fourth and Sixth Brigades waited in their jumping-off trenches before PoziÈres. The Fifth Brigade, of which the 26th Battalion was a unit, rested in reserve.

Dawn broke with a clear sky and promise of sunshine and a frosty tingle in the air. At six o'clock the eighteen-pounder guns of nine brigades of artillery, smashing into sudden activity, laid a dense barrage on the nearest rim of the German positions. Four minutes later the barrage lifted and jumped forward one hundred yards, and the infantry climbed out of their trenches and followed it into the first German trench. The fight was on in earnest, and in shell holes, in corners of trenches and against improvised barricades many great feats of arms were dared and achieved. A tank led the infantry against the strongly fortified ruins of the refinery and toppled down everything in its path.

Lieut. Dick Starkley and his friends gave ear all morning to the din of battle, wished themselves farther forward in the middle of it and wondered whether the brigades in front would leave anything for them to do on the morrow. Messages of success came back to them from time to time. By eight o'clock, after two hours of fighting, the Canadians had taken the formidable trenches, the sugar refinery, a fortified sunken road and hundreds of prisoners. The way was open to Courcelette.

"If they don't slow up—if they don't quit altogether this very minute—they'll be crowding right in to Courcelette and doing us out of a job!" complained Sergt. Hiram Sill. "That's our job, Courcelette is—our job for to-morrow. They've done what they set out to do, and if they go ahead now and try something they haven't planned for, well, they'll maybe bite off more than they can chew. The psychology of it will be all wrong; their minds aren't made up to that idea."

"I guess the idee ain't the hull thing," remarked a middle-aged corporal. "Many a good job has been done kind of unexpectedly in this war. I reckon this here psychology didn't have much to do with your D. C. M."

"That's where you're dead wrong, Henry," said Hiram. "I knew I'd get a D. C. M. all along, from the first minute I ever set foot in a trench. My mind and my spirit were all made up for it. I knew I'd get a D. C. M. just as sure as I know now that I'll get a bar to it—if I don't go west first."

Dick, who had joined the group, laughed and smote Hiram on the shoulder.

"You're dead right!" he exclaimed. "Old Psychology, you're a wonder of the age! Be careful what you make up your heart and soul and mind to next or you'll find yourself in command of the division."

"What do you mean, lieutenant?" asked Sill.

"You've been awarded the D. C. M. again, that's all!" cried Dick, shaking him violently by the hand. "You've got your bar, Old Psychology! Word of it just came through from the Brigade."

Sergt. Sill blushed and grew pale and blushed again.

"Say, boys, I'm a proud man," he said. "There are some things you can't get used to—and being decorated for distinguished conduct on the field of glory is one of them, I guess. If you'll excuse me, boys,—and you, lieutenant,—I'll just wander along that old trench a piece and think it over by myself."

The way was open to Courcelette. The battalions that had done the work in a few hours and that, despite a terrific fire from the enemy, had established themselves beyond their final objective, were anxious to continue about this business without pause and clean up the strongly garrisoned town. They had fought desperately in those few hours, however, and the enemy's fire had taken toll of them, and so they were told to sit tight in their new trenches; but the common sense of their assertion that Courcelette itself should be assaulted without loss of time, before the beaten and astounded enemy could recover, was admitted.

At half past three o'clock that afternoon the Fifth Brigade received its orders and instructions and immediately passed them on and elaborated them to the battalions concerned. By five o'clock the three battalions that were to make the attack were on their way across the open country, advancing in waves. German guns battered them but did not break their alignment. They reached our new trenches and, with the barrage of our own guns now moving before them, passed through and over the victorious survivors of the morning's battle.

The French Canadians and the Nova Scotians went first in two waves.

Dick Starkley and his platoon were on the right of the front line of the 26th, which was the third wave of attack. "Mopping up" was the battalion's particular job on this occasion.

"Mopping up," like most military terms, means considerably more than it suggests to the ear. The mops are rifles, bombs and bayonets; the things to be mopped are machine-gun posts still in active operation, bays and sections of trenches still occupied by aggressive Germans, mined cellars and garrisoned dugouts. Everything of a menacing nature that the assaulting waves have passed over or outflanked without demolishing must be dealt with by the "moppers-up."

The two lines of the 26th advanced at an easy walk; there was about five yards between man and man. Each man carried water and rations for forty-eight hours and five empty sandbags, over and above his arms and kit. The men kept their alignment all the way up to the edge of the village. Now and again they closed on the center or extended to right or left to fill a gap. Wounded men crawled into shell holes or were picked up and carried forward. Dead men lay sprawled beneath their equipment, with their rifles and bayonets out thrust toward Courcelette even in death. The "walking wounded" continued to go forward, some unconscious or unmindful of their injuries and others trying to bandage themselves as they walked.

Col. MacKenzie led them, and beside him walked a company commander. The two shouted to each other above the din of battle, and sometimes they turned and shouted back to their men. Other officers walked a few paces in front of their men.

A bursting shell threw Dick backward into a small crater that had been made earlier in the day and knocked the breath out of him for a few seconds. Frank Sacobie picked him up. The colonel gave the signal to double, and the right flank of the 26th broke from a walk into a slow and heavy jog. Sacobie jogged beside Dick.

"Just a year since we came into the line!" shouted Dick.

"We were pa'tridge shootin' two years ago to-day!" bawled Sacobie.

The colonel turned with his back to Courcelette and his face to his men and yelled at them to come on. "Speed up on the right!" he shouted. "The left is ahead. The 25th is in already. Shake a leg, boys. If they don't move quick enough in front, blow right through 'em."

At the near edge of the village a number of New Brunswickers, including their colonel, overtook and mingled with the second line of the 22d. Our barrage was lifted clear of Courcelette by this time and set like a spouting wall of fire and earth along the far side of it; but the shells of the enemy continued to pitch into it, heaving bricks and rafters and the soil of little gardens into the vibrating twilight. Machine guns streamed their fire upon the invaders from attics and cellars and sand-bagged windows. The bombs and rifles of the 22d smashed and cracked just ahead; and on the left, still farther ahead, crashes and bangs and shouts told all who could hear the whereabouts of Hilliam and his lads from Nova Scotia.

Dick Starkley saw a darting flicker of fire from the butt of a broken chimney beyond a cellar full of bricks and splintered timber. He shouted to his men, let his pistol swing from its lanyard and threw a bomb. Then, stooping low, he dashed at the jumble of ruins in the cellar. He saw his bomb burst beside the stump of chimney. The machine gun flickered again, and spat-spat-spat came quicker than thought. Other bombs smashed in front of him, to right and left of the chimney. He got his right foot entangled in what had once been a baby's crib.

There he was, staggering on the very summit of that low mound of rubbish, fairly in line with the aim of the machine gun. Something seized him by some part of his equipment and jerked him backward. He lit on his back and slid a yard, then beheld the face of Hiram Sill staring down at him.

"Hit?" asked Hiram.

"Don't think so. No."

"It's a wonder."

Five men from Dick's platoon joined them in the ruins. Together they threw seven grenades. The hidden gun ceased fire. Dick scrambled up and over the rubbish and around what was left of the shattered chimney that masked the machine-gun post. In the dim light he saw sprawled shapes and crouching shapes, and one stooped over the machine gun, working swiftly to clear it again for action. Dick pistoled the gunner. The three survivors of that crew put up their hands. Sergt. Sill disarmed them and told them to "beat it" back to the Canadian lines. Fifty yards on they found Sacobie and two privates counting prisoners at the mouth of a dugout.

"Twenty-nine without a scratch," said Sacobie.

"Find stretchers for them and send them back with our wounded, under escort," said Dick. "Put a corporal in charge. Is there a corporal here?"

"I'm here, sir."

"You, Judd? Take them back with as many of our wounded as they can carry. Two men with you should be escort enough. Hand over the wounded and fetch up any grenades and ammunition you can get hold of."

Capt. Smith staggered up to Dick.

"We are through and out the other side!" he gasped. "Get as many of our fellows as you can collect quick to stiffen this flank. Dig in beyond the houses—in line with the 25th. The colonel is up there somewhere."

He swayed and stumbled against the platoon commander. Dick supported him with an arm.

"Hit?" asked Dick.

"Just what you'd notice," said the captain, straightening himself and reeling away.

"Go after him and do what you can for him," said Dick to one of his men. "Bandage him and then go look for an M. O."

Dick hurried on toward the forward edge of the village, strengthening his following as he went. The shelling was still heavy and the noise deafening, but the hand-to-hand fighting among the houses had lessened. Dick led his men through one wall of a house that had been hit by a heavy shell and through the other wall into a little garden. There were bricks and tiles and iron shards in that garden; and in the middle of it, untouched, a little arbor of grapevines. Dick passed through the arbor on his way to the broken wall at the foot of the garden. There were two benches in it and a small round table.

Dick went through the arbor in a second, and then he sprang to the broken crest of the wall. He had scarcely mounted upon it before something red burst close in front of his eyes.

Dick was not astonished to find himself in the old garden at Beaver Dam. The lilacs were in flower and full of bees and butterflies. He still wore his shrapnel helmet. It felt very uncomfortable, and he tried to take it off—but it stuck fast to his head. Even that did not astonish him. He saw an arbor of grapevines and entered it and sat down on a bench with his elbows on a small round table. He recognized it as the arbor he had seen that evening in Courcelette—the evening of September 15.

"I must have brought it home with me," he reflected. "The war must be over."

Flora entered the arbor then and asked him why he was wearing an officer's jacket. He thought it queer that she had not heard about his commission.

"I was promoted on the Somme—no, it was before that," he began, and then everything became dark. "I can't see," he said.

"Don't worry about that," replied a voice that was not Flora's. "Your eyes are bandaged for the time being. They'll be as well as ever in a few days."

"I must have been dreaming. Where am I—and what is wrong with me?"

"You are in No. 2 Canadian General Hospital and have been dreaming for almost a week. But you are doing very well."

"What hit me? And have I all my legs and arms?"

"It must have been a whiz-bang," replied the unknown voice. "You are suffering from head wounds that are not so serious as we feared and from broken ribs and a few cuts and gashes. You must drink this and stop talking."

Dick obediently drank it, whatever it was.

"I wish you could give me some news of the battalion, and then I'd keep quiet for a long time," he said.

"Do you want me to open and read this letter that your brother left for you two days ago?" asked the Sister.

She read as follows:

"Dear Dick. As your temperature is up and you refuse to know me I am leaving this note for you with the charming Sister who seems to be your C. O. just now. She tells me that you will be as fit as a fiddle in a month or so. Accept my congratulations on your escape and on the battle of Courcelette. I have written to Beaver Dam about it and cabled that you will live to fight again. Frank Sacobie and that psychological sergeant with a D. C. M. and bar are booked for Blighty, to polish up for their commissions. I called on them after the fight. They are well—but I can't say that they escaped without a scratch, for they both looked as if they had been mixing it up with a bunch of wildcats. Sacobie has a black eye and doesn't know who or what hit him.

"Do you remember Jim Hammond? He came over to a battalion of this division with a draft from England about four months ago. He looked me up one day last week and told me a mighty queer story about himself. I won't try to repeat it, for I am sure he'll tell it to you himself at the first opportunity. He is making good, as far as I can see and hear. Pat Hammond has a job in London now. He was badly gassed about a month ago. I will get another day's special leave as soon as possible and pay you another visit.

"Your affectionate brother, Henry Starkley."