CHAPTER II THE CHASE
"Hail, smiling morn,
That tips the hills with gold."
The merry sound of horns blowing the reveillée greeted the sleepers as they awoke, lazily, and saw the morning dawn shining through their windows of horn, or stretched skin, or through the chinks of their shutters in the chambers of Wallingford Castle, and in a very short space of time the brief toilettes were performed, the hunting garb donned, and the whole precincts swarmed with life, while the clamour of dogs or of men filled the air.
Soon the doughty Baron with his commanding voice stilled the tumult, as he gave his orders for the day; the déjeûner or breakfast of cold meats, washed down with ale, mead, or wine, was next despatched, a hunting Mass was said in "St. Nicholas his Chapel"—that is, a Mass shorn of its due proportions and reduced within the reasonable compass of a quarter of an hour—and before the hour of Prime (7 A.M.) the whole train issued from the gates, Milo, Sheriff of Gloucester,[4] riding by the side of his host.
It was a bright, bracing morning that First of October, the air keen but delicious—one of those days when we hardly regret the summer which has left us and say we like autumn best; every one felt the pulses of life beat the more healthily, as the hunting train rode up by the side of the Moreton brook, towards distant Estune or East-town, as Aston was then called.
They were now approaching a densely-wooded district, for all that portion of the "honour" of Wallingford which lay beneath the downs, was filled with wood and marsh nourished by many slow and half stagnant streams, or penetrated by swiftly running brooks which still follow the same general course through the district in its cultivated state.