is to pass a recruit if they can. I
have known scores and hundreds of men rejected here tramp down to
Aldershot, or take the train if they had money enough in their pockets
to pay the fare, and get passed without a shadow of difficulty."

"I would rather not enlist for the next month or two," Edgar said;
"there might be somebody asking after me."

"If you will take my advice, lad, you will go back to your friends.
There are many young fellows run away from home, but most of them are
precious sorry for it afterwards."

"I am not likely to be sorry for it, sergeant, and if I am I shall not
go back. Do you think I could find anyone who would give me lessons on
the trumpet?"

"I should say that there would not be any difficulty about that. There
is nothing you cannot have in London if you have got money to pay for
it. If you were to go up to the Albany Barracks and get hold of the
trumpet-major, he would tell you who would teach you. He would not do it
himself, I daresay, but some of the trumpeters would be glad to give you
an hour a day if you can pay for it. Of course it would save you a lot
of trouble afterwards if you could sound the trumpet before you joined."

Edgar took the advice, and found a trumpeter in the Blues who agreed to
go out with him for an hour every day on to Primrose Hill, and there
teach him to sound the trumpet. He accordingly gave up his room at
Vauxhall, and moved across to the north side of Regent's Park. For six
weeks he worked for an hour a day with his instructor, who, upon his
depositing a pound with him as a guarantee for its return, borrowed a
trumpet for him, and with this Edgar would start of a morning, and
walking seven or eight miles into the country, spend hours in eliciting
the most mournful and startling sounds from the instrument.

At the end of the six weeks his money was nearly gone, although he had
lived most economically, and accordingly, after returning the trumpet to
his instructor, who, although he had been by no means chary of abuse
while the lessons were going on, now admitted that he had got on
first-rate, he went down to Aldershot, where his friend the recruiting
sergeant had told him that they were short of a trumpeter or two in the
1st Hussars.

It was as well that Edgar had allowed the two months to pass before
endeavouring to enlist, for after a month had been vainly spent in the
search for him, Rupert had suggested to his father that although too
young to enl