“The Secret: A Shudder in 3 Scenes,” was probably most memorable from the secret fact that it secured me a few inches of forbidden candle, which I used in surreptitious reading after “lights out” for some nights after. “The Brigand: a Musical Absurdity,” written by a versatile Roman Catholic padre, was apparently sufficiently realistic to procure me the first visit next morning from an officer in the audience who had lost his watch! Unrehearsed effects in this performance were the igniting of the cardboard brazier by the toppling over of the candle set within to illuminate it; the rolling across the stage of an empty and otherwise rather suspicious looking bottle, and the violent antipathies evidenced by “Bobby,” a French officer’s adopted fox-terrier, which I had to keep at bay with my double-barrelled cardboard blunderbuss. [Illustration: A CARLSRUHE PLAY-BILL.] Emerging from the hall within a few minutes of roll-call and with our faces masked by the vigorous colourations of our brigandage “under the greenwood tree,” we discovered to our dismay that the water supply had been cut off. For days afterwards my knees had a brownness unknown to them since I discarded the Black Watch kilt. [Illustration: POSTER FOR A FRENCH PLAY.] A very creditable performance was given of Bernard Shaw’s one-act play, “How He Lied to Her Husband”; Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest,” abridged to one act, was essayed with great earnestness. The French players gave us some very adroit performances, particularly of such comedies as Labiche’s “J’invite le Colonel.” One day there arrived in camp Lieut. Martin, late of the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, a little Irishman with a big brogue, a fund of humour and of its concomitant, good humour, and a budget of news of literary import, as that W. B. Yeats was married, and that G. B. S. had taken his place at the theatre. It was suggested to Martin that we might stage one of the Irish plays. He had had copies of a number of these in his valise when he was captured, but, of course, these were lost. He was able ultimately, however, to write out from memory Lady Gregory’s “The Rising of the Moon,” and for my guidance he gave me a little paper model of the staging as designed originally, I imagine, by Jack Yeats. For the performance the German authorities lent us a huge beer barrel--entirely empty. The cast was an all-Irish one, Lieut.-Colonel Lord Farnham playing the part of Sergeant of the R.I.C., Lieut. Martin playing the supposed ballad-singer. A week later, when Martin departed for another camp, he slipped into my hand a scrap of paper bearing a scrap of philosophy from “The Rising of the Moon”: “’Tis a quare world, and ’tis little any mother knows when she sees her child creepin’ on the floor what’ll happen to it, or who’ll be who in the end.” Well, I hope that I may yet chance across the humoursome little Irishman once more before the final--setting of the sun! “THE HOMELAND”