We covered perhaps a hundred miles a day during this period.  That does not sound like a great distance for high-powered motor cars, but we did a good deal of stopping, you see, here and there and everywhere.  We were roaming around in the backwater of war, you might say.  We were out of the main stream of carnage, but it was not out of our minds and our hearts.  Evidences of it in plenty came to us each day.  And each day we were a little nearer to the front line trenches than we had come the day before.  We were working gradually toward that climax that I had been promised.

I was always eager to talk to officers and men, and I found many chances to do so.  It seemed to me that I could never learn enough about the soldiers.  I listened avidly to every story that was told to me, and was always asking for more.  The younger officers, especially, it interested me to talk with.  One day I was talking to such a lieutenant.

“How is the spirit of your men?” I asked him.  I am going to tell you his answer, just as he made it.

“Their spirit?” he said, musingly.  “Well, just before we came to this billet to rest we were in a tightish corner on the Somme.  One of my youngest men was hit—­a shell came near to taking his arm clean off, so that it was left just hanging to his shoulders.  He was only about eighteen years old, poor chap.  It was a bad wound, but, as sometimes happens, it didn’t make him unconscious—­then.  And when he realized what had happened to him, and saw his arm hanging limp, so that he could know he was bound to lose it, he began to cry.

“‘What’s the trouble?’ I asked him, hurrying over to him.  I was sorry enough for him, but you’ve got to keep up the morale of your men.  ‘Soldiers don’t cry when they’re wounded, my lad.’

“‘I’m not crying because I’m wounded, sir!’ he fired back at me.  And I won’t say he was quite as respectful as a private is supposed to be when he’s talking to an officer!  ‘Just take a look at that, sir!’ And he pointed to his wound.  And then he cried out: 

“‘And I haven’t killed a German yet!’ he said, bitterly.  ’Isn’t that hard lines, sir?’

“That is the spirit of my men!”

I made many good friends while I was roaming around the country just behind the front.  I wonder how many of them I shall keep—­how many of them death will spare to shake my hand again when peace is restored!  There was a Gordon Highlander, a fine young officer, of whom I became particularly fond while I was at Tramecourt.  I had a very long talk with him, and I thought of him often, afterward, because he made me think of John.  He was just such a fine young type of Briton as my boy had been.

Months later, when I was back in Britain, and giving a performance at Manchester, there was a knock at the door of my dressing-room.

“Come in!” I called.

The door was pushed open and a man came in with great blue glasses covering his eyes.  He had a stick, and he groped his way toward me.  I did not know him at all at first—­and then, suddenly, with a shock, I recognized him as my fine young Gordon Highlander of the rest billet near Tramecourt.