a-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!

"Well," shouted Culhane finally, as a stop-gap to all this, "isn't any
one going to blow that thing? Do you mean to tell me that I'm hauling
all of you around, with not a man among you able to blow a dinky little
horn? What's the use of my keeping a lot of fancy vehicles in my barn
when all I have to deal with is a lot of shoe salesmen and floorwalkers?
Hell! Any child can blow it. It's as easy as a fish-horn. If I hadn't
these horses to attend to I'd blow it myself. Come on--come on!
Kerrigan, what's the matter with you blowing it?"

"The truth is, Mr. Culhane," explained Mr. Kerrigan, the very dapper and
polite heir of a Philadelphia starch millionaire, "I haven't had any
chance to practice with one of those for several years. I'll try it if
you want me to, but I can't guarantee--"

"Try!" insisted Culhane violently. "You can't do any worse than that
other mutt, if you blow for a million years. Blow it! Blow it!"

Mr. Kerrigan turned back and being very cheerfully tendered the horn by
the last failure, wetted and adjusted his lips, lifted it upward and
backward--and--

It was pathetic. It was positively dreadful, the wheezing, grinding
sounds that were emitted.

"God!" shouted Culhane, pulling up the coach to a dead stop. "Stop that!
Whoa! Whoa!!! Do you mean to say that that's the best you can do? Well,
this finishes me! Whoa! What kind of a