On this occasion they acted as rangers for beating up the thickets and rousing the game.

These attendants filled up the court of the castle, spacious as it was.

On the green without, you might have seen the motley assemblage of peasantry convened by report of the splendid hunting, including most of our old acquaintances from Tewin, as well as the jolly partakers of good cheer at Hob Filcher's.

Gregory the jester, it may well be guessed, had no great mind to exhibit himself in public after his recent disaster; but Oswald the steward, a great formalist in whatever concerned the public exhibition of his master's household state, had positively enjoined his attendance.

"What," quoth he, "shall the house of the brave Lord Boteler, or such a brave day as this, be without a fool?
Certes, the good Lord St.Clere and his fair lady sister might think our housekeeping as niggardly as that of their churlish kinsman at Gay Bowers, who sent his father's jester to the hospital, sold the poor sot's bells for hawk-jesses, and made a nightcap of his long-eared bonnet.