No one responded, although there was much discussion in a low key.  Some could, or thought they could, but hesitated to assume so frightful a risk.  At the same time Culhane, hearing the fuss and knowing perhaps that his substitute could not trumpet, turned grimly around and said, “Say, do you mean to say there isn’t any one back there who knows how to blow that thing?  What’s the matter with you, Caswell?” he called to one, and getting only mumbled explanations from that quarter, called to another, “How about you, Drewberry?  Or you, Crashaw?”

All three apologized briskly.  They were terrified by the mere thought of trying.  Indeed no one seemed eager to assume the responsibility, until finally he became so threatening and assured us so volubly that unless some immediate and cheerful response were made he would never again waste one blank minute on a lot of blank-blank this and thats, that one youth, a rash young society somebody from Rochester, volunteered more or less feebly that he “thought” that “maybe he could manage it.”  He took a seat directly under the pompously placed trumpeter, and we were off.

“Heigh-ho!” Out the gate and down the road and up a nearby slope at a smart clip, all of us gazing cheerfully and possibly vainly about, for it was a bright day and a gay country.  Now the trumpeter, as is provided for on all such occasions, lifted the trumpet to his lips and began on the grandiose “ta-ra-ta-ta,” but to our grief and pain, although he got through fairly successfully on his first attempt, there was one place where there was a slight hitch, a “false crack,” as some one rowdyishly remarked.  Culhane, although tucking up his lines and stiffening his back irritably at this flaw, said nothing.  For after all a poor trumpeter was better than none at all.  A little later, however, the trumpeter having hesitated to begin again, he called back, “Well, what about the horn?  What about the horn?  Can’t you do something with it?  Have you quit for the day?”

Up went the horn once more, and a most noble and encouraging “Ta-ra-ta-ta” was begun, but just at the critical point, and when we were all most prayerfully hoping against hope, as it were, that this time he would round the dangerous curves of it gracefully and come to a grand finish, there was a most disconcerting and disheartening squeak.  It was pathetic, ghastly.  As one man we wilted.  What would Culhane say to that?  We were not long in doubt.  “Great Christ!” he shouted, looking back and showing a countenance so black that it was positively terrifying.  “Who did that?  Throw him off!  What do you think—­that I want the whole country to know I’m airing a lot of lunatics?  Somebody who can blow that thing, take it and blow it, for God’s sake!  I’m not going to drive around here without a trumpeter!”

For a few moments there was more or less painful gabbling in all the rows, pathetic whisperings and “go ons” or eager urgings of one and another to sacrifice himself upon the altar of necessity, insistences by the ex-trumpeter that he had blown trumpets in his day as good as any one—­what the deuce had got into him anyhow?  It must be the horn!