nest sight the place
had ever seen, in a smart uniform the colour of the dun fields he had
forsaken so gaily. The day he burst upon the village there was such a
crowd around him at the post office that it looked like election times
and Dr. McGarry neglected his practice and followed him about.

"Eh, if I was only ten years younger I'd be going with you, Trooper,"
he cried enthusiastically. "Perhaps, I'll get there yet. There'll be
plenty more going over before this business is done. None of us has
any idea what this war is going to be like, let me tell you."

"It'll not last long," declared Mr. Holmes, not so much from conviction
as because that was the opinion he had given forth at first and he must
adhere to it. Besides he and the Doctor were opposed in politics and
religion, and they would naturally hardly agree about the war.

Trooper continued to be the centre of attraction for the few days he
spent at home before he was called to Valcartier. Though he was in the
village for such a short time he found an opportunity to assist
Marmaduke in a farewell piece of mischief, and though neither of them
had any notion of involving Christina in their prank, she, quite
accidentally, became one of the most interested parties.

The two village mischief-makers had long been hatching a plot to get
Wallace Sutherland away from his mother and off with the girls.
Trooper had promised the first one who would capture him and take him
home with her to supper before he left, the biggest box of chocolates
he could buy in Algonquin.

Though Wallace Sutherland had been living quietly in Orchard Glen all
summer, his prospects were much better than they had been on his return
home.

When Uncle William was in his most adverse mood, he had written a
caustic letter hinting that he had grave doubts concerning Wallace's
ill health interfering with his examinations. And just that very week,
a kindly fate intervened, and Wallace became really ill. Dr. McGarry
waited on him hand and foot, giving him every care possible, and at the
same time declaring that it was nothing but too much to eat and too
little to do that ailed the boy.

When Uncle William heard, however, he really repented of his hard
heart; not very humbly, for that was not Uncle William's way, but quite
substantially, nevertheless. He did not believe in agreeing with his
adversary too quickly, so he wrote to his brother instead of to his
nephew. He admitted that he mig