manded by the chief of staff, but at last these hardy sons of the north were pronounced fit, and soon their ears would vibrate with the shriek of shells from the great guns over the channel. And at the news no eyes in the Canadian Division brightened with anticipation as did the beady ones of Private Lecroix, sharp-shooter. At last he was to see these hated enemies of the Great Father.
For three weeks the —d Battalion had been holding a section of trenches in the mud at Ypres. For three weeks sharpshooter Lecroix had been watching the Prussians opposite for a shot at a head or an arm, as the gray owl of his native north watches a barren for ptarmigan. Time and again an unwary German had paid the penalty of offering the target of a few square inches to an eye trained to the keenness of the hawk's in wringing a livelihood from the lean lands of muskeg and forest. An eye and a hand that had held the rifle-sights true on a gray goose riding the wind found little leisure in the trenches of Flanders.
But this holing up in the mud like a musquash, this dull waiting for action which never came, wore sorely on the patience of the restless Cree. This was not the manner of war he had pictured to himself as he lay by his camp-fire in the snow on the long trail south through the stinging January winds. It was the personal combat of lunge and thrust, of blow for blow, after rifle-firing and a wild charge—the struggle of strong men at close grips, of which he had dreamed and for which he now thirsted. Of artil-
