It was very quiet.  Faint sounds came to us; there was a distant rumbling, like the muttering of thunder on a summer’s night, when the day has been hot and there are low, black clouds lying against the horizon, with the flashes of the lightning playing through them.  But that I had come already not to heed, though I knew full well, by now, what it was and what it meant.  For a little space the busy road had become clear; there was a long break in the traffic.

I turned to Adam and to Captain Godfrey.

“I’m thinking here’s a fine chance for a bit of a rehearsal in the open air,” I said.  “I’m not used to singing so—­mayhap it would be well to try my voice and see will it carry as it should.”

“Right oh!” said Godfrey.

And so we dug Johnson out from his snug barricade of cigarettes, that hid him as an emplacement hides a gun, and we unstrapped my wee piano, and set it up in the road.  Johnson tried the piano, and then we began.

I think I never sang with less restraint in all my life than I did that quiet morning on the Boulogne road.  I raised my voice and let it have its will.  And I felt my spirits rising with the lilt of the melody.  My voice rang out, full and free, and it must have carried far and wide across the fields.

My audience was small at first—­Captain Godfrey, Hogge, Adam, and the two chauffeurs, working away, and having more trouble with the tire than they had thought at first they would—­which is the way of tires, as every man knows who owns a car.  But as they heard my songs the old men and women in the fields straightened up to listen.  They stood wondering, at first, and then, slowly, they gave over their work for a space, and came to gather round me and to listen.

It must have seemed strange to them!  Indeed, it must have seemed strange to anyone had they seen and heard me!  There I was, with Johnson at my piano, like some wayside tinker setting up his cart and working at his trade!  But I did not care for appearances—­not a whit.  For the moment I was care free, a wandering minstrel, like some troubadour of old, care free and happy in my song.  I forgot the black shadow under which we all lay in that smiling land, the black shadow of war in which I sang.

It delighted me to see those old peasants and to study their faces, and to try to win them with my song.  They could not understand a word I sang, and yet I saw the smiles breaking out over their wrinkled faces, and it made me proud and happy.  For it was plain that I was reaching them—­that I was able to throw a bridge over the gap of a strange tongue and an alien race.  When I had done and it was plain I meant to sing no more they clapped me.

“There’s a hand for you, Harry,” said Adam.  “Aye—­and I’m proud of it!” I told him for reply.

I was almost sorry when I saw that the two chauffeurs had finished their repairs and were ready to go on.  But I told them to lash the piano back in its place, and Johnson prepared to climb gingerly back among his cigarettes.  But just then something happened that I had not expected.