The several rehearsals being over, and all things put in order for their approaching campaign, the exhibitors were about to depart, when it occurred to Uncle Timothy that he had not paid his footing for being admitted behind the scenes. He addressed the real wild Indian, and begged her to call for what best pleased her palate; which call resolved itself into a rasher on the coals, a rummer of nutbrown, and a thimblefull of brandy to keep off the spasms. She was then escorted to her tea-kettle, and put under cover for the night. The bear and the monkey having been similarly disposed of, their respective shavers made merry with the rest of the show-folk. Uncle Timothy took the little Italian boys under his care, and feasted them plenteously. At this moment a _rival_ tea-kettle drew up, with a caravan in the rear. “Pray, madam,” said a tragedy queen, peeping through a bit of ragged green curtain that depended before the entrance to the tea-kettle, to a dwarf in the caravan, “do you put up at Mother Red Cap's?” * This old house, fronting the fields at Hoxton, was formerly a noted place of resort for the Finsbury archers. Sir William D'Avenant, in his “Long Vacation in London,” says of the proctors and attorneys, “Each with solemn oath agree To meet in Fields of Finsburie; With loynes in canvas bow-case tyde, Where arrowes stick with mickle pride; With hats pinn'd up, and bow in hand, All day most fiercely there they stand, Like ghosts of Adam Bell and Clymme, Sol sets for fear they'll shoot at him.” A stray Toxopholite may now and then be seen at the Robin Hood, stringing his bow, and dreaming of the 'merry days that are past. Underneath the ancient sign is the following inscription. “Ye archers bold, and yeomen good, Stop, and drink with Robin Hood; If Robin Hood is not at home, Stop, and drink with Little John.” “Not I, madam,” responded the Lilliputian lady; “I stops at the Robin Hood * at merry Hoxton; * none but the _lower orders_ stops at Mother Red Cap's!” [Illustration: 0246] And the caravan moved on as fast as the wall-eyed anatomy of a Rosinante could drag it. * Thomas Dale, Drawer at the Crown Tavern at Aldgate, kept the Turk's Head Musiek-Booth in Smithfield-Rounds, over- against the Greyhound Inn, during the time of Bartholomew Fair (temp. W. 3rd), where he exhibited Scaramouch dances and drolls, and “the Merry Cuckolds of Hogsden!” It is stated in the Henslowe papers, deposited in the archives of Dulwich College, that Ben Jonson killed Gabriel Spencer, a fellow actor, in a duel fought in Hoxton Fields.