their ablutions at the nearest convenient well or spring.

Leaving this chamber in good time, Prince Edwy acompanied his new
friends to the priory church, where they heard mass before the sun was
high in the heavens, after which they returned to the hall to take a
light breakfast before they sought the attractions of the chase in the
forest. Full of life they mounted their horses, and galloped in the wild
exuberance of animal spirits with their dogs through the leafy arches of
the forest, startling the red deer, the wolf, or the wild boar. Soon
they roused a mighty individual of the latter tribe, who turned to bay,
when the boys dismounted and finished the affair with their boar spears,
not without some personal danger, and the loss of a couple of dogs.

Onward again they swept, past leafy glades of beech trees, where the
swineherd drove his half-tame charges, or where the woodcutters plied
their toil, and loaded their rude carts or hand barrows with fuel for
the kitchen of the hall; past rookeries, where the birds made the air
lively by their noise; over brook, through the half-dry marsh, until
they came upon an old wolf; whom they followed and slew for want of
better game, not without a desperate struggle, in which Elfric, ever the
foremost, got a much worse scratch than on the preceding day.

But how enjoyable the sport was, how sweet to breathe the bright pure
air of that May day; how grand to outstrip the wind over the yielding
turf, and at last to carry home the trophies of their prowess; the scalp
of the wolf, the tusks of the boar, leaving the serfs to bring in the
succulent flesh of the latter, while the hawks and crows fed upon the
former.

And then with what appetite they sat down to their "noon meat," taken,