women, lively folk and grave folk. They rode upon
mules and horses, and there was not a side-saddle in
the party; for this specialty was to remain unknown in
England for nine hundred years yet.

It was a pleasant, friendly, sociable herd; pious,
happy, merry and full of unconscious coarsenesses and
innocent indecencies. What they regarded as the
merry tale went the continual round and caused no
more embarrassment than it would have caused in the
best English society twelve centuries later. Practical
jokes worthy of the English wits of the first quarter of
the far-off nineteenth century were sprung here and
there and yonder along the line, and compelled the
delightedest applause; and sometimes when a bright