By seven o'clock of Christmas night, the Opera House was packed. At seven-thirty the program began--songs and tableaux and speeches and impersonations. It went without a hitch--swift, compelling, and, oh, so merry. In an hour after it began the house was a happy, cheering crowd, helped not a little in their joyfulness by the presence of scores upon scores of soldiers, guests from the camp, and by the aid which the applause was getting from two boxes filled with officers, the General among them. The program was almost finished--all but a single number which appeared simply as Music and Tableaux. If the audience had not been so interested, it would have noticed that up to this point there had been but the scantiest of reference to army or navy, to war or country. The very absence of these topics hushed them to silence when suddenly the orchestra broke into "Over There." It was like a call, penetrating, stirring. It hushed and thrilled them beyond applause. The hush deepened when suddenly, across the long drop curtain there flashed the words:-- SOMEWHERE IN FRANCE The orchestra played on, every brain fitting the words to the notes: "Over there, over there, Send the word over there, That the Yanks are coming, the Yanks are coming, The drums rum-tumming ev'rywhere. So prepare, say a pray'r, Send the word, send the word to beware, We'll be over, we're coming over, And we won't come back till it's over, over there." Slowly the curtain rose on a scene that much looking in the last few months at photographs and picture papers had made familiar to them--a French town, the kind they knew the boys were billeted in, with its long row of gray-faced houses, its red-tiled roofs, its quaint church with its simple, very simple statue of Joan of Arc; and behind, rising perpetually, mountains, along which ran a highway, climbing up and up. A company of boys in khaki swarmed over the place. They were resting on their arms, waiting orders. They hung out of the windows, sat in the doorways, grouped carelessly in the roadway, swarmed over the pedestal up to the very feet of the figure of Joan. The house watched the scene with swelling heart. Then from an upper window, there suddenly came a clear baritone. A boy, leaning out, his eyes on the little statue, began to sing a song new to Sabinsport. Alone he sang through the first verse, then the wonderful refrain was taken up, "Joan of Arc, Joan of Arc, Do your eyes From the skies See the foe? Don't you see the drooping fleur-de-lis? Can't you hear the tears of Normandy? Joan of Arc, Joan of Arc, Let your spirit guide us through, Come, lead your France to victory. Joan of Arc, they are calling you, calling you."