"'I CAN'T MAKE YOU OUT,' SAID THE SERGEANT."
"I can place you," he said. "You're a sergeant."
"Right," returned the other. "And you're from the country. Your big felt hat tells me so—and your tanned face. But I can see that you're a person of some importance where you come from."
Peter blushed. "I am a farmer and a trooper in the 8th Hussars, and I have come here to enlist for overseas with the new infantry battalion," he said.
"That's what I hoped!" exclaimed the sergeant. "Come along with me, lad. You are for the 26th Canadian Overseas Infantry Battalion."
The sergeant, whose name was Hammer, was a cheery, friendly fellow. He was also a very keen soldier and entertained a high opinion of the military qualities of the new battalion. On reaching the armory of the local militia regiment, now being used as headquarters of the new unit, Hammer led Peter straight to the medical officer. The doctor found nothing the matter with the recruit from Beaver Dam. Then Hammer paraded him before the adjutant. Peter answered a few questions, took a solemn oath and signed a paper.
"Now you're a soldier, a regular soldier," said the sergeant and slapped him on the back. "Come along now, and in half an hour I'll have you fitted into a uniform as trim as my own."
Within a month Peter Starkley had distinguished himself as a steady soldier; he had attained to the rank of lance corporal, and then of corporal. His steadiness was largely owing to homesickness. Of his few intimates the closest was Sergt. Hammer.
Jim Hammond did not join the regiment until close upon Christmas. He was found physically fit; and, as a result of a request made by Peter to Hammer and by the sergeant to Lieut. Scammell, and by the lieutenant to the adjutant, he became a member of the same platoon as Peter. Not only that, he became one of Hammer's section, in which Peter was a corporal.