the love of adventure which urged him on, but he overruled all
objections to his going and left with the others of us, on the last
day of August.

I remember that trip through the mountains in that soft, hazy,
beautiful August weather; the mountain-tops, white with snow, were
wrapped about with purple mist which twisted and shifted as if never
satisfied with their draping. The sheer rocks in the mountain-sides,
washed by a recent rain, were streaked with dull reds and blues and
yellows, like the old-fashioned rag carpet. The rivers whose banks
we followed ran blue and green, and icy cold, darting sometimes so
sharply under the track that it jerked one's neck to follow them; and
then the stately evergreens marched always with us, like endless
companies of soldiers or pilgrims wending their way to a favorite
shrine.

When we awakened the second morning, and found ourselves on the wide
prairie of Alberta, with its many harvest scenes and herds of cattle,
and the gardens all in bloom, one of the boys said, waving his hand
at a particularly handsome house set in a field of ripe wheat, "No
wonder the Germans want it!"

* * *

My story really begins April 24, 1915. Up to that time it had been
the usual one--the training in England, with all the excitement of
week-end leave; the great kindness of English families whose friends
in Canada had written to them about us, and who had forthwith sent
us their invitations to visit them, which we did with the greatest
pleasure, enjoying every minute spent in their beautiful houses; and