And the officers and men all spoke in the same way, smiling as they did so.  But I hae me doots!  I’d like to think I did real damage with my one shot, but I’m afraid my shell was just one of those that turned up a bit of dirt and made one of those small brown eruptions I had seen rising on all sides along the German lines as I had sat and smoked my pipe with Normabell earlier in the day.

“Well, anyway,” I said, exultingly, “that’s that!  I hope I got two for my one, at least!”

But my exultation did not last long.  I reflected upon the inscrutability of war and of this deadly fighting that was going on all about me.  How casual a matter was this sending out of a shell that could, in a flash of time, obliterate all that lived in a wide circle about where it chanced to strike!  The pulling of a lever—­that was all that I had done!  And at any moment a shell some German gunner had sent winging its way through the air in precisely that same, casual fashion might come tearing into this quiet nook, guided by some chance, lucky for him, and wipe out the major, and all the pleasant boys with whom I had broken bread just now, and the sweating gunners who had cheered me on as I fired my shot!

I was to give a concert for this battery, and I felt that it was time, now, for it to begin.  I could see, too, that the men were growing a bit impatient.  And so I said that I was ready.

“Then come along to our theater,” said the major, and grinned at my look of astonishment.

“Oh, we’ve got a real amphitheater for you, such as the Greeks used for the tragedies of Sophocles!” he said.  “There it is!”

He had not stretched the truth.  It was a superb theater—­a great, crater-like hole in the ground.  Certainly it was as well ventilated a show house as you could hope for, and I found, when the time came, that the acoustics were splendid.  I went down into the middle of the hole, with Hogge and Adam, who had become part of my company, and the soldiers grouped themselves about its rim.

Before we left Boulogne a definite programme had been laid out for the Reverend Harry Lauder, M.P., Tour.  We had decided that we would get better results by adopting a programme and sticking to it at all our meetings or concerts.  So, at all the assemblies that we gathered, Hogge opened proceedings by talking to the men about pensions, the subject in which he was so vitally interested, and in which he had done and was doing such magnificent work.  Adam would follow him with a talk about the war and its progress.

He was a splendid speaker, was Adam.  He had all the eloquence of the fine preacher that he was, but he did not preach to the lads in the trenches—­not he!  He told them about the war, and about the way the folks at hame in Britain were backing them up.  He talked about war loans and food conservation, and made them understand that it was not they alone who were doing the fighting.  It was a cheering and an inspiring talk he gave them, and he got good round applause wherever he spoke.