he took the train for his home town. As we parted he wished me the best of
success in America, and hoped that he would hear of my getting married
very soon, for he assured me he was so happy that he wished to know that
such happiness was mine also.

I made for home then, and in less than a week's time I was on my way to
the States.

Ned's good wishes for me have certainly been fulfilled. I have since
married, and it is my wife who has proved my sole inspiration and help in
writing this book.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

No doubt, if I had been trained in writing rather than in the tactical
requirements for service in the British army, I should call this the
appendix of my book. I prefer not to do so, having found in my own
experience that readers may be inclined to view the appendix in literature
as similar to the appendix in surgery--something which is unnecessary.

I cannot so regard this chapter. It is to me a component and interesting
part of the whole, for it goes to the source of the splendid and unique
traditions of the regiment in which I have been privileged to serve as a
soldier of my country.

A great deal has been written about the Black Watch. Even poets have been
inspired to sing of its deeds in stanzas which are undying. Men of
Highland birth, glorying in its history, have set down the facts of its
achievements under England's banner. Yet most of these records are
composed of dry facts, with no expressed sense of the romantic and the
unusual which enter so largely into the history of the most famous
fighting organization in the world. And most of them, also, might be
written from the viewpoint of a century ago. They do not bring the recital
of the achievements of the Black Watch into the atmosphere of to-day, with
due regard for the interesting and almost startling effect of contrast.

This thought came to me one day when I was riding on a trolley through one
of the busy districts of that part of Greater New York which lies east of
the bridged river, and suddenly realized that I was passing over the very
ground upon which the Black Watch had its first important engagement in
the war of the American Revolution--the Battle of Brooklyn. I recalled
that on this very spot, where clanging trolleys, quick motor cars and
hurrying pedestrians made a confusing rush of traffic, the men of the
Black Watch fought, in the fashion of their forefathers, with broadsword
and pistol, against the sturdy pioneers whose d