Mr. Hammond went home the first thing in the morning. John Starkley waited until the doctor called again and dressed the wound and said he had never seen any one take a splintered rib and a hole in the side so well as Peter.
"If he keeps on like this, you'll be able to take him home in ten days or so," said the doctor.
So John Starkley returned to Beaver Dam, delivered the good news to his family and heard in return that young Frank Sacobie had gone to St. John and joined the 26th.
CHAPTER III
THE VETERANS OF OTHER DAYS
WHEN Peter was able to travel, he was taken home to Beaver Dam, and there a medical officer, a major in spurs, examined him and congratulated him on being alive. Peter was given six months' sick leave; and that, he knew, killed his chance of crossing the ocean with his battalion. He protested, but the officer told him that, whether in bed in his father's house or with his platoon, he was still in the army and would have to do as he was told. The officer said it kindly and added that as soon as he was fit he should return to his battalion, whether it was in Canada, England or Flanders.
Jim Hammond vanished. The army marked him as a deserter, and even his own battalion forgot him. Confused rumors circulated round his home village for a little while and then faded and expired. As Jim Hammond vanished from the knowledge and thought of men, so vanished the mysterious rifleman who had splintered Peter's rib.
Spring brought the great news of the stand of the First Canadian Division at Ypres—the stand of the few against the many, of the Canadian militia against the greatest and most ruthless fighting machine of the whole world. The German army was big and ready, but it was not great as we know greatness now. The little Belgians had already checked it and pierced the joints of its armor; the French had beaten it against odds; the little old army of England, with its monocles and its tea and its pouter-chested sergeant majors, had outshot it and outfought it at every meeting; and now three brigades of Canadian infantry and a few batteries of Canadian artillery had stood undaunted before its deluge of metal and strangling gas and held it back from the open road to Calais and Paris.
Lieut. Pat Hammond wrote home about the battle. He had been in the edge of it and had escaped unhurt. Henry Starkley, of the First Field Company, was there, too. He received a slight wound. Private letters and the great stories of the newspapers thrilled the hearts of thousands of peaceful, unheroic folk. Volunteers flowed in from lumber camps and farms.