He took Dick and Frank Sacobie with him. Once they got beyond the outskirts of the home settlement they found heavy sledding. At noon they halted, blanketed and baited the mares, boiled the kettle and lunched. The wide, white roadway before them, winding between walls of green-black spruces and gray maples, was marked with only the tracks of one pair of horses and one pair of sled runners--evidently made the day before. Peter guessed them to be those of Mr. Hammond's team, but he said nothing about that to his companions. Here and there they passed drifted clearings and little houses sending blue feathers of smoke into the bright air. They came to places where the team that had passed the previous day had been stuck in the drifts and laboriously dug out. They were within two miles of the settlement, between heavy woods fronted with tangled alders, when the cracking _whang!_ of exploding cordite sounded in the underbrush. The mares plunged, then stood. The reins slipped from Peter's mittened hands. "I'm hit, boys!" he said and then sagged over across Dick's knees. [Illustration: "'I'M HIT, BOYS!' HE SAID."] They laid him on hay and horse blankets in the bottom of the pung and covered him with fur robes. Then Sacobie got up in front and drove. No sound except the rapping of a woodpecker came from the woods. Peter breathed regularly. Presently he opened his eyes. "It's in the ribs, by the feel of it--but it doesn't hurt much," he said. "Felt like a kick from a horse at first. Remember not to say anything about Jim Hammond." They put him to bed at the first farmhouse they reached. All his clothing on the right side was stiff with blood. Dick bandaged the wound; and a doctor arrived two hours later. The bullet had nipped in and out, splintering a rib, and lay just beneath the skin. Peter had bled a good deal, but not to a dangerous extent. Before sunrise the next morning Dick and Frank Sacobie set out on their return journey, taking with them a brief telegram and a letter for Capt. Long. Peter had dictated the message, but had written the letter with great effort, one wavery word after another. Mr. Hammond and John Starkley reached Pike Settlement late at night. The storekeeper seemed broken in spirit, but some color came back to his face when he saw Peter lying there in the bed at the farmhouse with as cheerful an air as if he had only strained his ankle. "I must see you a few minutes alone before I leave," he whispered, stooping over the bed. "Don't worry," answered Peter. John Starkley was vastly relieved to find his son doing so well. His bewilderment that any one in that country should pull a trigger on Peter almost swamped his indignation. The more he thought it over the more bewildered he became. "You haven't an enemy in the world, Peter--except the Germans," he said. "But that was no chance shot. If it had been an accident, the fellow with the rifle would have come out to lend a hand."