When I had done I went aboot amang the men, shaking hands with such as could gie me their hands, and saying a word or two to all of them.  Directly in front of the platform there lay a wounded Scots soldier, and all through my concert he watched me most intently; he never took his eyes off me.  When I had sung my last song he beckoned to me feebly, and I went to him, and bent over to listen to him.

“Eh, Harry, man,” he said, “will ye be doin’ me a favor?”

“Aye, that I will, if I can,” I told him.

“It’s to ask the doctor will I no be gettin’ better soon.  Because, Harry, mon, I’ve but the one desire left—­and that’s to be in at the finish of yon fight!”

I was to give one more concert in Boulogne, that night.  That was more cheerful, and it was different, again, from anything I had done or known before.  There was a convalescent camp, about two miles from town, high up on the chalk cliffs.  And this time my theater was a Y.M.C.A. hut.  But do not let the name hut deceive ye!  I had an audience of two thousand men that nicht!  It was all the “hut” would hold, with tight squeezing.  And what a roaring, wild crowd that was, to be sure!  They sang with me, and they cheered and clapped until I thought that hut would be needing a new roof!

I had to give over at last, for I was tired, and needed sleep.  We had our orders.  The Reverend Harry Lauder, M.P., Tour was to start for Vimy Ridge at six o’clock next morning!

CHAPTER XIV

We were up next morning before daybreak.  But I did not feel as if I were getting up early.  Indeed, it was quite the reverse.  All about us was a scene of such activity that I felt as if I had been lying in bed unconsciously long—­as if I were the laziest man in all that busy town.  Troops were setting out, boarding military trains.  Cheery, jovial fellows they were—­the same lads, some of them, who had crossed the Channel with me, and many others who had come in later.  Oh, it is a steady stream of men and supplies, indeed, that goes across the narrow sea to France!

Motor trucks—­they were calling them camions, after the French fashion, because it was a shorter and a simpler word—­fairly swarmed in the streets.  Guns rolled ponderously along.  It was not military pomp we saw.  Indeed, I saw little enough of that in France.  It was only the uniforms and the guns that made me realize that this was war.  The activity was more that of a busy, bustling factory town.  It was not English, and it was not French.  I think it made me think more of an American city.  War, I cannot tell you often enough, is a great business, a vast industry, in these days.  Someone said, and he was right, that they did not win victories any more—­that they manufactured them, as all sorts of goods are manufactured.  Digging, and building—­that is the great work of modern war.

Our preparations, being in the hands of Captain Godfrey and the British army, were few and easily made.  Two great, fast army motor cars had been put at the disposal of the Reverend Harry Lauder, M.P., Tour, and when we went out to get into them and make our start it was just a problem of stowing away all we had to carry with us.