''Ave you got it, Snapper?' whispered Private Robinson anxiously at the end. 'Will you be able to remember it?' Snapper, with his eyes fixed on vacancy, began to play the air over softly, when from further down the trench came a murmur of applause, that rose to a storm of hand-clappings and shouts of 'Bravo!' and 'Encore--'core--'core!' The mouth-organist played on unheedingly and Private Robinson sat following him with attentive ear. 'I'm not sure of that bit just there,' said the player, and tried it over with slight variations. 'P'raps I'll remember it better after a day or two. I'm like that wi' some toons.' 'We might kid 'em to sing it again,' said Robinson hopefully, as another loud cry of 'Encore!' rang from the trench. 'Was you know vat we haf sing?' asked a German voice in tones of some wonderment. 'It's a great song, Dutchie,' replied Private Robinson. 'Fine song--goot--bong! Sing it again to us.' 'You haf not understand,' said the German angrily, and then suddenly from a little further along the German trench a clear tenor rose, singing the Hymn in English. The Towers subsided into rapt silence, hugging themselves over their stupendous luck. When the singer came to the end of the verse he paused an instant, and a roar leaped from the German trench . . . 'England!' It died away and the singer took up the solo. Quicker and quicker he sang, the song swirling upward in a rising note of passion. It checked and hung an instant on the last line, as a curling wave hangs poised; and even as the falling wave breaks thundering and rushing, so the song broke in a crash of sweeping sound along the line of the German trench on that one word--'England!' Before the last sound of it had passed, the singer had plunged into the next verse, his voice soaring and shaking with an intensity of feeling. The whole effect was inspiring, wonderful, dramatic. One felt that it was emblematic, the heart and soul of the German people poured out in music and words. And the scorn, the bitter anger, hatred, and malice that vibrated again in that chorused last word might well have brought fear and trembling to the heart of an enemy. But the enemy immediately concerned, to wit His Majesty's Regiment of Tower Bridge Foot, were most obviously not impressed with fear and trembling. Impressed they certainly were. Their applause rose in a gale of clappings and cries and shouts. They were impressed, and Private 'Enery Irving, clapping his hands sore and stamping his feet in the trench-bottom, voiced the impression exactly. 'It beats Saturday night in the gallery o' the old Brit.,' he said enthusiastically. 'That bloke--blimy--'e ought to be doin' the star part at Drury Lane'; and he wiped his hot hands on his trousers and fell again to beating them together, palms and fingers curved cunningly, to obtain a maximum of noise from the effort.