They had had a triumphal passage down the Solent, greeted by cheers and whistles from all the neighbouring boats, which at once blunted the edge of the parting from England and put a still finer point to their patriotic zeal. Some of them, they knew,--perhaps many of them--would never see the green cliffs of Wight again. But they were there on highest service, and their hearts were strong and their spirits above normal. They had gone first to Le Mans, then to Villeneuve St Georges, and finally to Paris--such a different Paris from all Ray’s recollections of it!--and yet in some ways a greater Paris than he had ever known it. It was no longer the city of gaiety and light, but the heart of a nation travailing in the birth of a new soul. France and Britain had had to fall back before the tumultuous rush of the better-prepared German hosts,--from Mons to Le Cateau,--to St Quentin,--to La Fère,--to Compiégne,--to Chantilly,--very near Paris now. But there the quarry turned and hurled itself at its pursuers. The hunters became the hunted and were forced back to the Marne, across the Ourcq, to the Aisne. And it was while this was going on that the Scottish came to Paris for the cheer and satisfaction of its citizens. Bit by bit, each to prevent the other overlapping and outflanking, the hostile lines had spread further and further towards the coast. From the banks of the Aisne, by way of Soissons and Compiégne and Amiens to St Omer, General French’s eagle-eyed prevision had swept the British forces round behind the French lines to that north-west corner of France where Calais lay all open to the invader. From the north came Sir Henry Rawlinson, with the 7th Division and the 3rd Cavalry Division, covering the retreat of the gallant but exhausted Belgian Army from the neighbourhood of Antwerp, and held the wolves at bay till the gap by the coast at Nieuport was closed and the long line locked tight from the sea right round to Belfort in the east. But, so far, the duties of the London Scottish, onerous and important as they had been, had not taken them into the actual fighting line. They were drawing nearer and nearer to it, however, and were all looking forward with keen anticipation and the very natural desire to be the first Territorials actually in the mêlée alongside their comrades of the regular army. They had acted as body-guard to Sir John French; they had served as military police and as railway-porters. And they had done everything required of them, no matter how unpleasant or how different from their usual avocations, with the zest of men whose souls had risen to the great occasion. They had handled mountains of stores, and guns and ammunition, and convoys of wounded and prisoners, and had buried many dead.