s out of the wild, luxurious jungle of grass that
had grown up in that blood-drenched soil. I wondered if the owner of
the bit of tartan were still safe or if he lay under one of the
crosses that I saw.

There was room for sad speculation here! Who had he been? Had he
swept on, leaving that bit of his kilt as evidence of his passing?
Had he been one of those who had come through the attack, gloriously,
to victory, so that he could look back upon that day so long as he
lived? Or was he dead--perhaps within a hundred yards of where I
stood and gazed down at that relic of him? Had he folks at hame in
Scotland who had gone through days of anguish on his account--such
days of anguish as I had known?

[ILLUSTRATION: Berlin struck off this medal when the "Lusitania" was
sunk: on one side the brutal catastrophe, on the other the grinning
death's head Teutonically exultant. "And so now I preach the war on
the Hun my own way," says Harry Lauder. (See Lauder09.jpg)]

[ILLUSTRATION: HARRY LAUDER "Laird of Dunoon." (See Lauder10.jpg)]

I asked a soldier for some wire clippers, and I cut the wire on
either side of that bit of tartan, and took it, just as it was. And
as I put the wee bit of a brave man's kilt away I kissed the
blood-stained tartan, for Auld Lang Syne, and thought of what a tale
it could tell if it could only speak!

"Ha' ye seen a' the men frae the braes and the glen,
Ha' ye seen them a' marchin' awa'?
Ha' ye seen a' the men frae the wee but-an'-ben,
And the gallants frae mansion and ha'?"

I have said before that I do not want to tell you of the tales of
atrocities that I heard in France. I heard plenty--ayes and terrible
they were! But I dinna wish to harrow the feelings of those who read
more than I need, and I will leave that task to those who saw for
themselves with their eyes, when I had but my ears to serve me. Yet
there was one blood-chilling story that my boy John told to me, and
that the finding of that bit of Black Watch tartan brings to my mind.
He told it to me as we sat before the fire in my wee hoose at Dunoon,
just a few nights before he went back to the front for the last time.
We were talking of the war--what else was there to talk aboot?

It was seldom that John touched on the harsher things he knew about
the war. He preferred, as a rule, to tell me stories of the courage
and the devotion of his men, and of the light way that they turned
things when there was so