“Do ye begin!” said Sandy.

“Moses!” said They, and pulled.

“Bobbie Burns!” cried Sandy, and returned the compliment.

“Abraham!” said Ikey, and pulled again.  “Ouch—­Duggie Haig!” said Sandy.

And then Ikey grabbed a handful of hairs at once.

“Joseph and his brethren!” he said, gloating a bit as he watched the tears starting from Sandy’s eyes at the pain of losing so many good hairs at once.

“So it’s pulling them out in bunches ye are!” said Sandy.  “Ah, well, man” And he reached with both his hands for Ikey’s thatch.

“The Hieland Brigade!” he roared, and pulled all the hairs his two hands would hold!

Ah, weel, there are sad thoughts that come to me, as well as proud and happy ones, when I think of the bonnie kilted laddies who fought and died so nobly out there against the Hun!  They were my own laddies, those, and it was with them and amang them that my boy went to his death.  It was amang them I would find, I thought, those who could tell me more than I knew of how he had died, and of how he had lived before he died.  And I thought the boys of the brigade would be glad to see me and to hear my songs—­songs of their hames and their ain land, auld Scotland.  And so I used what influence I had, and did not think it wrong to employ at such a time, and in such a cause.  For I knew that if they sent me to the Hieland Brigade they would be sending me to the front of the front line—­for that was where I would have to go seeking the Hieland laddies!

I waited as patiently as I could.  And then one day I got my orders!  I was delighted, for the thing they had told me could not be done had actually been arranged for me.  I was asked to get ready to go to France to entertain the soldiers, and it was the happiest day I had known since I had heard of my boy’s death.

There was not much for me to do in the way of making ready.  The whole trip, of course, would be a military one.  I might be setting out as a minstrel for France, but every detail of my arrangements had to be made in accordance with military rules, and once I reached France I would be under the orders of the army in every movement I might make.  All that was carefully explained to me.

But still there were things for me to think about and to arrange.  I wanted some sort of accompaniment for my songs, and how to get it puzzled me for a time.  But there was a firm in London that made pianos that heard of my coming trip, and solved that problem for me.  They built, and they presented to me, the weest piano ever you saw—­a piano so wee that it could be carried in an ordinary motor car.  Only five octaves it had, but it was big enough, and sma’ enough at once.  I was delighted with it, and so were all who saw it.  It weighed only about a hundred and fifty pounds—­less than even a middling stout man!  And it was cunningly built, so that no space at all was wasted.  Mrs. Lauder, when she saw it, called it cute, and so did every other woman who laid eyes upon it.  It was designed to be carried on the grid of a motor car—­and so it was, for many miles of shell-torn roads!