I have never been booed or hissed by an audience, since I have been on the stage.  I understand that it is a terrible and a disconcerting experience, and one calculated to play havoc with the stoutest of nerves.  It is an experience I am by no means anxious to have, I can tell you!  But I doubt if it could seem worse to me than the interruption of a shell.  The Germans, that day, showed no ear for music, and no appreciation of art—­my art, at least!

And so it seemed well to me to cut my programme, to a certain extent, at least, and bid farewell to my audience, dressed and undressed.  It was a performance at which it did not seem to me a good idea to take any curtain calls.  I did not miss them, nor feel slighted because they were absent.  I was too glad to get away with a whole skin!

The shelling became very furious now.  Plainly the Germans meant to take no chances.  They couldn’t guess what the gathering their airplanes had observed might portend, but, if they could, they meant to defeat its object, whatever that might be.  Well, they did not succeed, but they probably had the satisfaction of thinking that they had, and I, for one, do not begrudge them that.  They forced the Reverend Harry Lauder, M.P., Tour to make a pretty wide detour, away from the river, to get back to the main road.  But they fired a power of shells to do so!

When we finally reached the road I heard a mad sputtering behind.  I looked around in alarm, because it sounded, for all the world, like one of those infernal whizz bangs, chasing me.  But it was not.  The noise came from a motor cycle, and its rider dashed up to me and dropped one foot to the ground.

“Here’s a letter for you, Harry,” he said.

It was a package that he handed me.  I was surprised—­I was not expecting to have a post delivered to me on the battlefield of Arras!  It turned out that the package contained a couple of ugly-looking bits of shell, and a letter from my friends the Highlanders on the other side of the railway embankment.  They wrote to thank me for singing for them, and said they hoped I was none the worse for the bombardment I had undergone.

“These bits of metal are from the shell that was closest to you when it burst,” their spokesman wrote.  “They nearly got you, and we thought you’d like to have them to keep for souvenirs.”

It seemed to me that that was a singularly calm and phlegmatic letter!  My nerves were a good deal overwrought, as I can see now.

Now we made our way slowly back to division headquarters, and there I found that preparations had been made for very much the most ambitious and pretentious concert that I had yet had a chance to give in France.  There was a very large audience, and a stage or platform had been set up, with plenty of room on it for Johnson and his piano.  It had been built in a great field, and all around me, when I mounted it, I could see kilted soldiers—­almost as far as my eye could reach.  There were many thousands of them there—­indeed, all of the Highland Brigade that was not actually on duty at the moment was present, and a good many other men beside, for good measure.