candle, so we had prayers and a reading, and sang "Nearer
My God to Thee," and some other hymns. When the service was over, I
asked those who would like to make their Communion to come to the
lower cellar at the end, where there was more room. We appropriated
one of the corners and there I had seven or eight communicants. More
than a year afterwards, in London, I met a young soldier in the
Underground Railway, and he told me that he had made his communion on
that day, and that when he was lying on the ground wounded at midnight,
the shells falling round him, he thought what a comfort it was to know
that he had received the Sacrament. I did not leave the Red Chateau
till late the following afternoon, when I went back with a ration-party.

The most unpleasant things at Albert were the air raids, which occurred
every fine night. One moonlight night I lay on my bed, which was in
the top storey of our house, and listened to some German planes
dropping bombs upon the town. The machines were flying low and trying
to get the roads. Crash would follow crash with great regularity. They
came nearer and nearer, and I was just waiting for the house to be
struck when, to my great relief, the planes went off in another
direction. Next day a sentry told me that he had heard a hundred bombs
burst, and, as far as he knew, not one of them had done any damage,
all having fallen among the ruined houses and gardens of the town.

I had been asked to look up the grave of a young officer of a Scottish
battalion, who had been killed in the July advance. I rode over to
Mametz and saw all that historic fighting ground. The village was a
heap of ruins, but from out of a cellar came a smartly-dressed lieutenant,
who told me that he had the great privilege and honour of being the
Town Major of Mametz. We laughed as we surveyed his very smelly and
unattractive little kingdom. I found the grave, and near it were
several crosses over the last resting places of some of our Canadian
Dragoons, who had been in the great advance. All that region was one
of waste and lonely country-side, blown bare by the tempest of war.

It was during our last visit to Albert that the 4th Division arrived
to take over the line from us. I had the great joy, therefore, of
having my second son near me for six days. His battalion, the (p. 147)
87th, was camped on a piece of high ground to the right of "Tara Hill,"
and from my window I could see the officers and men walkin