Out of the gray, chilly, and silent dawn came the sharp notes of a bugle. The sound echoed among the mist-enshrouded hills, the notes vibrating in and out among the trees, and then seemed to die away in the distance.
But if any one of the several thousand prospective soldiers, sleeping the sleep of the more or less just in the tents of Camp Dixton, thought it was but a dream, those notes of the bugle, he was sadly, if not rudely, awakened when the sound came with greater insistence, as if calling over and over again:
“Get up! Get up! You must get up!”
“I say, Ned!” lazily called Bob from his bed amid the blankets on the ground under a khaki tent, “what day is it?”
“What difference does that make?” asked Ned. “What time is it?”
“You ought to know without asking, when you hear that horn,” grunted Jerry.
“Horn? Bugle you mean,” came a voice from the other corner of the tent, if a conical tent, the shape used in the army, can be said to have “corners.”
“Have it your own way,” assented Jerry. “I’m anxious to know what Bob meant by asking what day it was.”
“If it’s only Sunday we’ll get a chance to rest,” explained the stout Chunky, peering out from under his blankets. For he and the others had wrapped up well, as the night had been chilly.
“Chance to rest!” exclaimed Ned. “Say, we haven’t done anything yet.”