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. In May Dick Starkley made the great move of his young life. He was now seventeen years old and sound and strong. He saw that Peter could not get away with his battalion--that, unless something unexpected happened, the Second Canadian Division would get away without a Starkley of Beaver Dam. So he did the unexpected thing: he went away to St. John without a word, introduced himself to Sgt. Dave Hammer as Peter's brother, added a year to his age and became a member of the 26th Battalion. He found Frank Sacobie there, already possessed of all the airs of an old soldier. Dick sent a telegram to his father and a long, affectionate, confused letter to his mother. His parents understood and forgave and went to St. John and told him so--and Peter sent word that he, too, understood; and Dick was happy. Then with all his thought and energy and ambition he set to work to make himself a good soldier. Peter did not grumble again about his sick leave. His wound healed; and as the warm days advanced he grew stronger with every day. He had been wounded in the performance of his duty as surely as if a German had fired the shot across the mud of No Man's Land; so he accepted those extra months in the place and life he loved with a gratitude that was none the less deep for being silent.