followed the crowd to the sacred heath upon which it was to take place.

Ascot Heath was at that time somewhat different from its present condition. You remember, Brother Rhine, when you were last in England, what a sight we saw together in that celebrated locality. All London seemed to have emptied itself upon Windsor and its neighbourhood. The heath was thronged with excited crowds.

Hundreds upon hundreds of carts, gigs, and carriages of every description crowded one upon the other, and you owned that Rhineland had nothing to equal our Ascot week. Very different was the condition of things at the time of which I speak. I need hardly tell you that there was no "grand stand" in those days; the "ring" was as yet unknown; "Aunt Sally" was not, and never a gipsy had as yet appeared in the country. But the heath was wide and wild, rough and rugged, a fit place for the enactment of any such strange rites as those which his companion had led Smith to anticipate. He pushed boldly forward until he reached a spot from whence he could view the ceremony.

On the very edge of the forest, beneath a gigantic oak, upon a piece of rising ground, stood a figure upon which he, in common with every one else around him, riveted his eyes with the most intense interest and attention. It was a woman of more than ordinary height, clothed from head to foot in white drapery, her hair failing loosely upon her shoulders, with a simple chaplet of oak-leaves over her forehead. Her features were such as impelled you to look a second time after you had once gazed upon her. Nobility was stamped upon her brow. Courage, truth, and every other virtue which ennobles those of mortal mould were imprinted upon the lineaments of that countenance. Erect she stood, gazing down upon the peasant crowd below; and while her right hand held the sickle with which she had been performing some of the mystic rites of her order, her left arm was far outstretched as she pointed in the direction of that part of the forest in which the mighty Boar had made his home.