"I guess you've got the right idea, Old Psychology," said the sergeant.
The 26th spent five days in the line on that tour. With the exception of one day and night of rain they had fine weather. They mended their wire and did a fair amount of business in No Man's Land. The enemy attempted no further raids; his last effort had evidently given him more information concerning the quality of the new battalion than he could digest in a week. At any rate he kept very quiet.
At the end of the tour the battalion went back a little way to huts on the bushy flanks of Scherpenberg, where they "rested" by performing squad, platoon and company drill and innumerable fatigues. The time remaining at their disposal was devoted to football and base-ball and investigations of villages and farmsteads in the neighborhood.
Their second tour in was more lively and less comfortable than the first. Under the drench of rain and the gnawing of dank and chilly mists their trenches and all the surrounding landscape were changed from dry earth to mud. Everything in the front line, including their persons, became caked with mud. The duck boards became a chain of slippery traps; and in low trenches they floated like rafts. The parapets slid in and required constant attention; and what the water left undone in the way of destruction the guns across the way tried to finish.
It was hard on the spirit of new troops; they were toughened to severe work and rough living, but not to the deadening mud of a front-line trench in low ground. So their officers planned excitement for them, to keep the fire of interest alive in their hearts. That excitement was obtained in several ways, but always by a move of some sort against the enemy or his defenses. Patrol work was the most popular form of relief from muddy inaction. Lieut. Scammell quickly developed a skill in that and an appetite for it that soon drew the colonel's attention to himself and his followers.
By the end of September, even the medical officers of New Brunswick had to admit that Corp. Peter Starkley was fully recovered from his wound. As for Peter himself, he affirmed that he had not felt anything of it for the past two months. He had worked at the haying and the harvesting on Beaver Dam and his own place without so much as a twinge of pain.
Peter returned to his military duties eagerly, but inspired only by his sense of duty. His heart was more than ever in his own countryside; but despite his natural modesty he knew that he was useful to his king and country as a noncommissioned officer, and with that knowledge he fortified his heart. He tried to tell Vivia Hammond something of what he felt. His words were stumbling and inadequate, but she understood him. And at the last he said:
"Vivia, don't forget me, for I shall be thinking of you always—more than of anyone or anything in the world." And then, not trusting his voice for more, he kissed her hastily.
Vivia wept and made no attempt to hide her tears or the reason for them.