The cornet is of all instruments in an ordinary band the one which produces the most penetrating sounds. While young Kerrigan was practising a new tune on it all the inhabitants of the town of Bally-moy were able to hear him. He was aware of this and sorry for it. He did not, indeed, pity his fellow-citizens. He would not have understood a complaint made by a nervous person who found himself tortured by a long series of efforts to get a note in the middle of a tune right. It would have struck him as mere affectation if anyone had objected to hearing the same tune with the same gasping wheeze in the middle of it played over a hundred or a hundred and fifty times in one evening. Young Kerrigan’s dislike of the necessary publicity of his practising was similar to that which other artists feel when members of the public break in and see their work in an incomplete condition. He liked his music to be appreciated. He felt that acknowledgment of the stages by which it came to its ultimate perfection was likely to diminish its glory. But he had no place in which he could practise except the back yard of his father’s house, and that, unfortunately, was in the very middle of the town. In order to get out of his difficulty young Kerrigan adopted the plan of learning new tunes only in autumn and winter, when strong gales were blowing. On a calm summer evening every note of the cornet, whether right or wrong, was heard. Even the sounds which were not quite notes but only painful grunts penetrated open windows and doors. But when a storm was raging most of the notes were blown away, and only occasionally, when there happened to be a lull, did anybody except young Kerrigan himself hear anything. The plan worked out very satisfactorily. Amid the rush and clatter of a tempest people took no notice of such stray wailings of the cornet as reached their ears. But, like many excellent plans, this one was liable to break down in emergencies. It broke down badly when Dr. O’Grady insisted that the band should learn “Rule Britannia” in the middle of August.