CHAPTER IV.
A HUNTING PARTY .-- AN ADVENTURE .-- A DELIVERANCE.
The next morning the bugles were sounded by daybreak in the court of Lord Boteler's mansion, to call the inhabitants from their slumbers, to assist in a splendid chase, with which the baron had resolved to entertain his neighbour Fitzallen and his noble visitor St.Clere.Peter Lanaret the falconer was in attendance, with falcons for the knights, and tiercelets for the ladies, if they should choose to vary their sport from hunting to hawking.

Five stout yeomen keepers, with their attendants, called Bagged Robins, all meetly arrayed in Kendal green, with bugles and short hangers by their sides, and quarterstaffs in their hands, led the slow-hounds, or brackets, by which the deer were to be put up.

Ten brace of gallant greyhounds, each of which was fit to pluck down, singly, the tallest red deer, were led in leashes by as many of Lord Boteler's foresters.

The pages, squires, and other attendants of feudal splendour, well attired in their best hunting-gear, upon horseback or foot, according to their rank,--with their boar-spears, long bows, and cross-bows, were in seemly waiting.
A numerous train of yeomen, called in the language of the times retainers, who yearly received a livery coat and a small pension for their attendance on such solemn occasions, appeared in cassocks of blue, bearing upon their arms the cognizance of the house of Boteler as a badge of their adherence.

They were the tallest men of their hands that the neighbouring villages could supply, with every man his good buckler on his shoulder, and a bright burnished broadsword dangling from his leathern belt.