This trench had been a part of the intricate German defensive system far back of their old front line, and they had had the pains of building and hollowing out the fine dugout into which I now went for shelter.  Here they had lived, deep under the earth, like animals—­and with animals, too.  For when I reached the bottom a dog came to meet me, sticking out his red tongue to lick my hand, and wagging his tail as friendly as you please.

He was a German dog—­one of the prisoners of war taken in the great attack.  His old masters hadn’t bothered to call him and take him with them when the Highlanders came along, and so he had stayed behind as part of the spoils of the attack.

That wasn’t much of a dog, as dogs go.  He was a mongrel-looking creature, but he couldn’t have been friendlier.  The Highlanders had adopted him and called him Fritz, and they were very fond of him, and he of them.  He had no thought of war.  He behaved just as dogs do at hame.

But above us the horrid din was still going on, and bits of shells were flying everywhere—­anyone of them enough to kill you, if it struck you in the right spot.  I was glad, I can tell ye, that I was so snug and safe beneath the ground, and I had no mind at all to go out until the bombardment was well over.  I knew now what it was really to be under fire.  The casual sort of shelling I had had to fear at Vimy Ridge was nothing to this.  This was the real thing.

And then I thought that what I was experiencing for a few minutes was the daily portion of these laddies who were all aboot me—­not for a few minutes, but for days and weeks and months at a time.  And it came home to me again, and stronger than ever, what they were doing for us folks at hame, and how we ought to be feeling for them.

The heavy firing went on for three-quarters of an hour, at least.  We could hear the chugging of the big guns, and the sorrowful swishing of the shells, as if they were mournful because they were not wreaking more destruction than they were.  It all moved me greatly, but I could see that the soldiers thought nothing of it, and were quite unperturbed by the fearful demonstration that was going on above.  They smoked and chatted, and my own nerves grew calmer.

Finally there seemed to come a real lull in the row above, and I turned to the general.

“Isn’t it near time for me to be finishing my concert, sir?” I asked him.

“Very good,” he said, jumping up.  “Just as you say, Lauder.”

So back we went to where I had begun to sing.  My audience reassembled, and I struck up “The Laddies Who Fought and Won” again.  It seemed, somehow, the most appropriate song I could have picked to sing in that spot!  I finished, this time, but there was some discord in the closing bars, for the Germans were still at their shelling, sporadically.

So I finished, and I said good-by to the men who were to stay in the trench, guarding that bit of Britain’s far flung battleline.  And then the Reverend Harry Lauder, M.P., Tour was ready to go back—­not to safety, at once, but to a region far less infested by the Hun than this one where we had been such warmly received visitors!