And so a private soldier joined our party as guide, and we took to the road again.  The Bapaume road it was—­a famous highway, bitterly contested, savagely fought for.  It was one of the strategic roads of that whole region, and the Hun had made a desperate fight to keep control of it.  But he had failed—­as he has failed, and is failing still, in all his major efforts in France.

There was no talking in our car, which, this morning, was the second in the line.  I certainly was not disposed to chat, and I suppose that sympathy for my feelings, and my glumness, stilled the tongues of my companions.  And, at any rate, we had not traveled far when the car ahead of us stopped, and the soldier from Albert stepped into the road and waited for me.  I got out when our car stopped, and joined him.

“I will show you the place now, Mr. Lauder,” he said, quietly.  So we left the cars standing in the road, and set out across a field that, like all the fields in that vicinity, had been ripped and torn by shell-fire.  All about us, as we crossed that tragic field, there were little brown mounds, each with a white wooden cross upon it.  June was out that day in full bloom.  All over the valley, thickly sown with those white crosses, wild flowers in rare profusion, and thickly matted, luxuriant grasses, and all the little shrubs that God Himself looks after were growing bravely in the sunlight, as though they were trying to hide the work of the Hun.

It was a mournful journey, but, in some strange way, the peaceful beauty of the day brought comfort to me.  And my own grief was altered by the vision of the grief that had come to so many others.  Those crosses, stretching away as far as my eye could reach, attested to the fact that it was not I alone who had suffered and lost and laid a sacrifice upon the altar of my country.  And, in the presence of so many evidences of grief and desolation a private grief sank into its true proportions.  It was no less keen, the agony of the thought of my boy was as sharp as ever.  But I knew that he was only one, and that I was only one father.  And there were so many like him—­and so many like me, God help us all!  Well, He did help me, as I have told, and I hope and pray that He has helped many another.  I believe He has; indeed, I know it.

Hogge and Dr. Adam, my two good friends, walked with me on that sad pilgrimage.  I was acutely conscious of their sympathy; it was sweet and precious to have it.  But I do not think we exchanged a word as we crossed that field.  There was no need of words.  I knew, without speech from them, how they felt, and they knew that I knew.  So we came, when we were, perhaps, half a mile from the Bapaume road, to a slight eminence, a tiny hill that rose from the field.  A little military cemetery crowned it.  Here the graves were set in ordered rows, and there was a fence set around them, to keep them apart, and to mark that spot as holy ground, until the end of time.  Five hundred British boys lie sleeping in that small acre of silence, and among them is my own laddie.  There the fondest hopes of my life, the hopes that sustained and cheered me through many years, lie buried.