Pen shook his head, and the boy looked at him wonderingly.
“There! There it is again! Let’s get into hiding somewhere, or we shall be running right into them.”
For another clear bugle-note rang out as if in answer to the first.
“That’s nothing to mind, Punch,” said Pen. “These notes came from behind, and were echoed from the mountain in front.”
“Why, of course! But I can’t help it. Father always said that I had got the thickest head he ever see. I got thinking that we were going to run right into some French regiment. Then it’s all right, and we shall be able to divide our rations somewhere up yonder where the echoes are playing that game. I say, what a mistake might be made if some officer took an echo like that for the real thing!”
“Yes,” said Pen thoughtfully; and the two lads stopped and listened to different repetitions of the calls, which seemed fainter and fainter as the time went on; and the sun was well up, brightening as lovely a landscape of mountain, glen, and green slope as ever met human eye.
But it was blurred to Pen by the desolation and wildness of a country that was being ravaged by invasion and its train of the horrors of war.
As the lads tramped on, seeing no sign of human habitation, not even a goat-herd’s hut on the mountain-slopes, the sun grew hotter and the way more weary, till all at once Punch pointed to a few goats just visible where the country was growing more rugged and wild.
“See that, comrade?” he cried.
“Yes, goats,” said Pen wearily; and he stopped short, to throw himself down upon a heathery patch, and removed his cap to wipe his perspiring forehead.