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202 ROAMIN' IN THE GLOAMIN'
at every turn we were reminded of the boy who was lying dead in France. There were his photographs, his guns, his fishing-rods, his horse, his billiard cue, his books, his music! And right over the road from Glen Branter was Invernoaden House all ready to receive him and his bonnie bride. I tell you we cried ourselves to sleep every night.
Then one day, at the end of May, came a letter from the War Office giving me my orders. My request had been agreed to. I was to visit the front with full permission to entertain the Scottish troops wherever they were. I was to be taken specially to those sectors of the British front where the Argyll and Sutherlands, the Black Watch, the Camerons, the Gordons and the Highland Light Infantry were operating. These names always make the blood of a Scot run faster for the hearing even in the "piping times of peace' ' but in the war years they were magic words to me and to "ilka son o' the heather." I knew how our Highland glens had been cleared to the last young man, how every town and village in Scotland had been drained to supply these famous regiments with the necessary man-power. Can you wonder if I felt like going across the Channel and hugging every kilted laddie to my heart?
Two intimate personal friends of my own had been selected to accompany us — James Hogge, a member of Parliament for one of the divisions of Edinburgh, whose work on behalf of the widows and orphans of fallen soldiers and sailors had won the admiration of the country, and the Reverend George Adam, at that time a prominent official in the Munitions Ministry, who had come home from his church in Montreal to lend a hand in the struggle. Better companions could not have been desired. "Jamie" Hogge and "Geordie" Adam and I have been through lots of "ploys" together but none half so interesting or memorable as our trip to the War Zone in 191 7. On the boat which took us across the Channel we were christened "The Rev