After a while Peter got up and went to Jim's room in his pyjamas; he sat on the edge of Jim's bed, and they talked of the fighting over in France. "I've been thinking about my reënlistment," said Jim, "and I guess I'll take a chance on my own name. It's my name I want to make good." "Sounds risky--but I don't believe it is as risky as it sounds," said Peter. "Not if I go far enough away to enlist--to Halifax or Toronto. There must be lots of Hammonds in the army. I'll take the risk, anyway. It isn't likely I'll run across any of the old crowd. None of our old officers would be hard on me, I guess, if they found me fighting and doing my duty." "Capt. Long is dead. A great many of the old crowd are dead, and others have been promoted out of the regiment. Remember Dave Hammer?" "Yes. If I could ever be as good a soldier as Dave Hammer I think I'd forget--except sometimes in the middle of the night, maybe--what a mean, worthless fellow I have been." "I'll tell you what, Jim," said Peter suddenly, "I'll write a letter for you to carry; and if any one spots you over there and is nasty about it, you go to any officer you know in the old battalion and tell the truth and show my letter. I guess that will clear your name, Jim, if you do your duty." "You don't mean to put _everything_ in the letter, do you?" "Only what is known officially--that you went home from your regiment here in Canada on pass, started acting the fool and deserted. That is the charge against you, Jim--desertion. But it is the mildest sort of desertion, and reënlistment just about offsets it. The same thing done in France in the face of the enemy is punished--you know how." "Yes, I know how it is punished," said Hammond. "You wouldn't worry about that if you knew as much about how I feel now as I do myself. Of course I've got to prove it before you'll believe it, Peter, but I'm not afraid to fight." When Peter had gone back to his room, he sat down to write the letter that Jim Hammond was to carry in his pocket. It was a long letter, and Peter was a slow writer. He spared no pains in making every point of his argument perfectly clear. He staked the military reputation of the whole Starkley family on James Hammond's future behavior as a soldier. He sealed it with red wax and his great-grandfather's seal and addressed the envelope to "Any Officer of the 26th Can. Infty. Bn. or of any Unit of the Can. Army Corps of the B. E. F." When finally he had the letter done, it was morning. CHAPTER VIII THE 26TH "MOPS UP" AFTER Jim Hammond went away from Beaver Dam he wrote to Mrs. Starkley from Toronto, saying that he had enlisted in a new infantry battalion and that all was well with him. That was the last news from him, or of him, to be received at Beaver Dam for many months.