e young lads; for then, as
now, boys could find pleasure even in slushy weather, when the sodden
snow is fit for nothing but to make snowballs of.

Thrice that bitter winter the moat was frozen over, and the lads, making
themselves skates of marrow-bones, which they bought from the hall cook
at a groat a pair, went skimming over the smooth surface, red-checked
and shouting, while the crows and the jackdaws looked down at them from
the top of the bleak gray walls.

Then at Yule-tide, which was somewhat of a rude semblance to the Merry
Christmas season of our day, a great feast was held in the hall, and all
the castle folk were fed in the presence of the Earl and the Countess.
Oxen and sheep were roasted whole; huge suet puddings, made of barley
meal sweetened with honey and stuffed with plums, were boiled in great
caldrons in the open courtyard; whole barrels of ale and malmsey were
broached, and all the folk, gentle and simple, were bidden to the feast.
Afterwards the minstrels danced and played a rude play, and in the
evening a miracle show was performed on a raised platform in the north
hall.

For a week afterwards the castle was fed upon the remains of the good
things left from that great feast, until everyone grew to loathe fine
victuals, and longed for honest beef and mustard again.

Then at last in that constant change the winter was gone, and even the
lads who had enjoyed its passing were glad when the winds blew warm once
more, and the grass showed green in sunny places, and the leader of the
wild-fowl blew his horn, as they who in the fall had flown to the south
flew, arrow-like, northward again; when the buds swelled and the leaves
burst forth once more, and crocuses and then daffodils gleamed in the
green grass, like sparks and flames of gold.

With the spring came the out-door sports of the season; among others
that of ball--for boys were boys, and played at ball even in those
faraway days--a game called trap-ball. Even yet in some parts of England
it is played just as it was in Myles Falworth's day, and enjoyed just as
Myles and his friends enjoyed it.

So now that the sun was warm and the weather pleasant the game of
trap-ball was in full swing every afternoon, the play-ground being an
open space between the wall that surrounded the castle grounds and that
of the privy garden--the pleasance in which the ladies of the Earl's
family took the air every day, and upon which their apartments opened.

Now