They were the heroes of Loos--or some of them--Camerons and Seaforths, Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, Gordons and King's Own Scottish Borderers, who, with the London men, were first on Hill 70 and away to the Cite St.-Auguste. They left many comrades there, and their battalions have been filled up with new drafts--of the same type as themselves and of the same grit--but that day no ghost of grief, no dark shadow of gloom, was upon any of the faces upon which I looked round a festive board in a long, French hall, to which their wounded came in those days of the September battle. There were young men there from the Scottish universities and from Highland farms, sitting shoulder to shoulder in a jolly comradeship which burst into song between every mouthful of the feast. On the platform above the banqueting-board a piper was playing, when I came in, and this hall in France was filled with the wild strains of it. “And they're grand, the pipes,” said one of the Camerons. “When I've been sae tired on the march I could have laid doon an' dee'd the touch o' the pipes has fair lifted me up agen.” The piper made way for a Kiltie at the piano, and for Highlanders, who sang old songs full of melancholy, which seemed to make the hearts of his comrades grow glad as when they helped him with “The Bonnie, Bonnie Banks of Loch Lomond.” But the roof nearly flew off the hall to “The March of the Cameron Men,” and the walls were greatly strained when the regimental marching song broke at every verse into wild Highland shouts and the war-cry which was heard at Loos of “Camerons, forward!” “Forward, Camerons!” “An Englishman is good,” said one of the Camerons, leaning over the table to me, “and an Irishman is good, but a Scot is the best of all.” Then he struck the palm of one hand with the fist of another. “But the London men,” he said, with a fine, joyous laugh at some good memory, “are as good as any fighting-men in France. My word, ye should have seen 'em on September 25th. And the London Irish were just lions!” Out in the rain-slashed street I met the colonel of a battalion of Argylls and Sutherlands, with several of his officers; a tall, thin officer with a long stride, who was killed when another year had passed. He beckoned to me and said: “I'm going the rounds of the billets to wish the men good luck in the new year. It's a strain on the constitution, as I have to drink their health each time!” He bore the strain gallantly, and there was something noble and chivalrous in the way he spoke to all his men, gathered together in various rooms in old Flemish houses, round plum-pudding from home or feasts provided by the army cooks. To each group of men he made the same kind of speech, thanking them from his heart for all their courage.