"Dear Dick. As your temperature is up and you refuse to know me I am leaving this note for you with the charming Sister who seems to be your C. O. just now. She tells me that you will be as fit as a fiddle in a month or so. Accept my congratulations on your escape and on the battle of Courcelette. I have written to Beaver Dam about it and cabled that you will live to fight again. Frank Sacobie and that psychological sergeant with a D. C. M. and bar are booked for Blighty, to polish up for their commissions. I called on them after the fight. They are well--but I can't say that they escaped without a scratch, for they both looked as if they had been mixing it up with a bunch of wildcats. Sacobie has a black eye and doesn't know who or what hit him. "Do you remember Jim Hammond? He came over to a battalion of this division with a draft from England about four months ago. He looked me up one day last week and told me a mighty queer story about himself. I won't try to repeat it, for I am sure he'll tell it to you himself at the first opportunity. He is making good, as far as I can see and hear. Pat Hammond has a job in London now. He was badly gassed about a month ago. I will get another day's special leave as soon as possible and pay you another visit. "Your affectionate brother, Henry Starkley." CHAPTER IX FRANK SACOBIE OBJECTS WITHIN ten days of the battle of Courcelette, Lieut. Richard Starkley was able to see; and twenty days after that he was able to walk. His walking at first was an extraordinary thing, and extraordinary was the amount of pleasure that he derived from it. With a crutch under one shoulder and Sister Gilbert under the other, bandaged and padded from hip to neck, and with his battered but entire legs wavering beneath him, he crossed the ward that first day without exceeding the speed limit. Brother officers in various stages of repair did not refrain from expressing their opinions of his performance. "Try to be back for tea, old son," said a New Zealand major. "Are those your legs or mine you're fox-trotting with?" asked an English subaltern; and an elderly colonel called, "I'll hop out and show you how to walk in a minute, if you don't do better than that!" The colonel laughed, and the inmates of the other beds laughed, and Dick and Sister Gilbert laughed, for that, you must know, was a very good joke. The humor of the remark lay in the fact that the elderly colonel had not a leg to his name. Day by day Dick improved in pace and gait, and his activities inspired a number of his companions to shake an uncertain leg or two. The elderly colonel organized contests; and the great free-for-all race twice round the ward was one of the notable sporting events of the war.