present; you will have plenty of time to begin with them regularly
with the notes when all the bustle is over."

"Eh, ye know the calls, boys? Hardy and Graves, give them your bugles,
and let us hear them. Now for the advance."

Tom and Peter felt very nervous, but they had really practiced hard
for an hour a day for the last four months, and could play all the
calls they knew steadily and well. The bandmaster made no remark until
they had sounded some half a dozen calls as he named them, and then
he said, "The lads have a vera gude idea of it, Captain Manley. They
are steadier and clearer than mony a one of the boys already. Will ye
begin at once, lads, or will ye wait till ye get your uniform?"

"We had rather begin at once," the boys answered together.

"Vera gude. Hardy, take two bugles out of the chest, and then take
these lads--What's your name, boys? Eh? Scudamore? A vera gude
name--take them over to Corporal Skinner, he will be practicing with
the others on the ramp."

With a word of grateful thanks to Captain Manley as he went out before
them, the boys followed their new guide out to the ramparts. A guide
was hardly necessary, for an incessant bugling betokened the place,
where, in one of the bastions behind the barracks, seven or eight
buglers were sounding the various calls under the direction of
Corporal Skinner.

The corporal was a man of few words, for he merely nodded when the
boy--who had not opened his lips on the way, indeed, he was too busy