"Jack wanted me to," continued Dick. "Well, why not? It's the same old army and the same old war. A fellow should make an effort to oblige a man like Jack--dead or alive." He was silent for several seconds, then went on: "Henry has been offered a staff job in London. Peter is safe. Sacobie has brought down four Boche machines already. What have you heard about Jim Hammond?" "It's Blighty for him--and then Canada. He'll never in the world bend that leg again." For a while Dick continued to pace back and forth across the muddy floor in silence. "We are scattering, Old Psychology," he said. "This war is a great scatterer--but there are some things it can't touch. You'll be homesick at your new job, Hiram,--and I'll be homesick with the Essex bunch, I suppose,--but there are some things that make it all seem worth the rotten misery of it." He glanced down at Kathleen's letter, then put it into his pocket. "Jack Davenport, for one," he ended. "A soldier and a gentlemen," said Hiram. THE END Transcriber Notes: Passages in italics were indicated by _underscores_. Passages in bold were indicated by =equal signs=. Small caps were replaced with ALL CAPS. Throughout the dialogues, there were words used to mimic accents of the speakers. Those words were retained as-is. The illustrations have been moved so that they do not break up paragraphs and so that they are next to the text they illustrate. Thus the page number of the illustration might not match the page number in the List of Illustrations, and the order of illustrations may not be the same in the List of Illustrations and in the book. Errors in punctuation and inconsistent hyphenation were not corrected unless otherwise noted. On page 142, "comissions" was replaced with "commissions". On page 243, "harrassed" was replaced with "harassed". End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Fighting Starkleys, by Theodore Goodridge Roberts