Greegor frae Gleska: "I'd raither ye gied me a drink.
I'll no speak for Private MacCrimmon, but oh, mon, I'm perishin' dry. . . ."
_"She'll wush that Loch Lefen wass whuskey," says Hecky MacCrimmon frae Skye._

III

Near Albert,

February 1915.

Over the spine of the ridge a horned moon of reddish hue peers through
the splintered, hag-like trees. Where the trenches are, rockets are
rising, green and red. I hear the coughing of the Maxims, the peevish
nagging of the rifles, the boom of a "heavy" and the hollow sound of its
exploding shell.

Running the car into the shadow of a ruined house, I try to sleep. But a
battery starts to blaze away close by, and the flame lights up my
shelter. Near me some soldiers are in deep slumber; one stirs in his
sleep as a big rat runs over him, and I know by experience that when one
is sleeping a rat feels as heavy as a sheep.

But how _can_ one possibly sleep? Out there in the dark there is the
wild tattoo of a thousand rifles; and hark! that dull roar is the
explosion of a mine. There! the purring of the rapid firers. Desperate
things are doing. There will be lots of work for me before this night
is over. What a cursed place!

As I cannot sleep, I think of a story I heard to-day. It is of a
Canadian Colonel, and in my mind I shape it like this:

His Boys

"I'm going, Billy, old fellow. Hist, lad! Don't make any noise.
There's Boches to beat all creation, the pitch of a bomb away.
I've fixed the note to your collar, you've got to get back to my Boys,
You've got to get back to warn 'em before it's the break of day."

The order came to go forward to a trench-line traced on the map;
I knew the brass-hats had blundered, I knew and I told 'em so;
I knew if I did as they ordered I would tumble into a trap,
And I tried to explain, but the answer came like a pistol: "Go."

Then I thought of the Boys I commanded--I always called them "my Boys"--
The men of my own recruiting, the lads of my countryside;
Tested in many a battle, I knew their sorrows and joys,
And I loved them all like a father, with more than a father's pride.

To march my Boys to a shambles as soon as the dawn of day;
To see them helplessly slaughtered, if all that I guessed was true;
My Boys that trusted me blindly, I thought and I tried to pray,
And then I arose and I muttered: "It's either them or it's you."

I rose and I donned my rain-coat;