onged with strangers from the neighbouring
villages, and later on crowds began to arrive from London, some having
come along the highway on horseback, and others having rowed in various
craft up the river. All were clad in holiday attire, and the streets
presented an appearance of unwonted bustle and gaiety. The Maypole
in Bachelors' Acre was hung with flowers. Several booths, with flags
floating above them, were erected in the same place, where ale, mead,
and hypocras, together with cold pasties, hams, capons, and large joints
of beef and mutton, might be obtained. Mummers and minstrels were in
attendance, and every kind of diversion was going forward. Here was one
party wrestling; there another, casting the bar; on this side a set
of rustics were dancing a merry round with a bevy of buxom Berkshire
lasses; on that stood a fourth group, listening to a youth playing on
the recorders. At one end of the Acre large fires were lighted, before
which two whole oxen were roasting, provided in honour of the occasion
by the mayor and burgesses of the town; at the other, butts were set
against which the Duke of Shoreditch and his companions, the five
marquises, were practising. The duke himself shot admirably, and never
failed to hit the bulls-eye; but the great feat of the day was performed
by Morgan Fenwolf, who thrice split the duke's shafts as they stuck in
the mark.

"Well done!" cried the duke, as he witnessed the achievement; "why, you
shoot as bravely as Herne the Hunter. Old wives tell us he used to split
the arrows of his comrades in that fashion."

"He must have learnt the trick from Herne himself in the forest," cried
one of the bystanders.

Morgan Fenwolf looked fiercely round in search of the speaker, but
could not discern him. He, however, shot no more, and refusing a cup of
hypocras offered him by Shoreditch, disappeared among the crowd.

Soon after this the booths were emptied, the bar thrown down, the
Maypole and the butts deserted, and the whole of Bachelors' Acre cleared
of its occupants--except those who were compelled to attend to the
mighty spits turning before the fires--by the loud discharge of ordnance
from the castle gates, accompanied by the ringing of bells, announcing
that the mayor and burgesses of Windsor, together with the officers of
the Order of the Garter, were setting forth to Datchet Bridge to meet
the royal procession.

Those who most promptly obeyed this summons beheld the lower castle