lize that they are actually at war.
But, no--there is always the drone and the squawking of the German
shells, and the plop-plop, from time to time, as one finds its mark
in the mud nearby. But to think of shooting always at an enemy you
cannot see!

It brought to my mind a tale I had heard at hame in Scotland. There
was a hospital in Glasgow, and there a man who had gone to see a
friend stopped, suddenly, in amazement, at the side of a cot. He
looked down at features that were familiar to him. The man in the cot
was not looking at him, and the visitor stood gaping, staring at him
in the utmost astonishment and doubt.

"I say, man," he asked, at last, "are ye not Tamson, the baker?"

The wounded man opened his eyes, and looked up, weakly.

"Aye," he said. "I'm Tamson, the baker." His voice was weak, and he
looked tired. But he looked puzzled, too.

"Weel, Tamson, man, what's the matter wi' ye?" asked the other. "I
didna hear that ye were sick or hurt. How comes it ye are here? Can
it be that ye ha' been to the war, man, and we not hearing of it,
at all?"

"Aye, I think so," said Tamson, still weakly, but as if he were
rather glad of a chance to talk, at that.

"Ye think so?" asked his friend, in greater astonishment than ever.
"Man, if ye've been to the war do ye not know it for sure and
certain?"

"Well, I will tell ye how it is," said Tamson, very slowly and
wearily. "I was in the reserve, do ye ken. And I was standin' in
front of my hoose one day in August, thinkin' of nothin' at all. I
marked a man who was coming doon the street, wi' a blue paper in his
hand, and studyin' the numbers on the doorplates. But I paid no great
heed to him until he stopped and spoke to me.

"He had stopped outside my hoose and looked at the number, and then
at his blue paper. And then he turned to me.

"'Are ye Tamson, the baker?' he asked me--just as ye asked me that
same question the noo.

"And I said to him, just as I said it to ye, 'Aye, I'm Tamson,
the baker.'

"'Then it's Hamilton Barracks for ye, Tamson,' he said, and handed me
the blue paper.

"Four hours from the time when he handed me the blue paper in front
of my hoose in Glasgow I was at Hamilton Barracks. In twelve hours I
was in Southhampton. In twenty hours I was in France. And aboot as
soon as I got there I was in a lot of shooting and running this way
and that that they ha' told me since was the Battle of the Marne.

"And in twenty-four hours more I wa