It was in the last week of December that the large draft, carefully selected and splendidly fit, changed their feathers from purple to red and went over to the lines of the 85th. The officers packed their kits and the happy fellowship of the Mess Room, that had lasted from the happy days of concentration in sunny Aldershot, was dissolved, alas, never in its completeness to reassemble again. Between five and six hundred of the 219th Battalion still remained. Kits and trunks were packed, adieus paid, our temporary English home broken up, and promptly at 12 o’clock Saturday, December 30th; the Purple Feather ranks, now varied with blue and green and red feathers, moved off headed by the 85th Band. The Battalion settled down in a pleasant part of the Bramshott Camp, on the brow of a hill overlooking the picturesque dale through which flowed a streamlet gathered from the meadows of Haslemere, Shottermill and Hammer. It was the country of George Eliot and of Tennyson’s later years. Many travellers had come to it, but never any on so strange an errand. Presently there appeared in Camp the Old 17th. It had been the first Nova Scotian Unit sent Overseas. Apart from its Commanding Officer, Lieut.-Colonel Cameron, it possessed hardly any Nova Scotians; it was officered and its ranks were filled almost exclusively by Western Canadians. This Battalion, like the famous Minotaur, had fed on the remnants of many others in its time. Would the Highland Brigade succumb to the usual fate or would it prove an indigestible morsel? At the commencement of 1917 a change of policy was inaugurated affecting all the Canadian Camps in England. Witley was reserved for the Fifth Division. In the others the Training Brigades became reserve ones, which would have a full strength of 8,000 each, and each Reserve Battalion (2,000 in strength) would have some definite fighting Unit at the Front to which it would send reinforcements whenever required. The 17th was made a Reserve Battalion in the 5th Reserve Brigade; it was to reinforce the 25th and 85th and to be distinctively Nova Scotian; it was ordered to take over the 219th and 193rd. Officially the whale swallowed Jonah, but in the curious and unscriptural sequel Jonah took over the control of the whale from the inside. This second transformation was undoubtedly due to the fact that the 17th Reserve was to become a Nova Scotian Unit and naturally Nova Scotians assumed the dominant role; and these were to be found in the ranks of the Highland Brigade. But it was also due to a stubborn and persistent _esprit de corps_ that had always characterized the 219th.