about ten o'clock
The man simply and honestly believes the thing happened as he says it happened ; he is transparently incapable of any lie so elaborate and sustained , and in the belief of the simple , yet often keenly penetrating , rustic minds about him I find a very strong confirmation of his sincerity . He believes -- and nobody can produce any positive fact to falsify his belief . As for me , with this much of endorsement , I transmit his story -- I am a little old now to justify or explain . He says he went to sleep on Aldington Knoll about ten o'clock one night -- it was quite possibly Midsummer night , though he has never thought of the date , and he can not be sure within a week or so -- and it was a fine night and windless , with a rising moon . I have been at the pains to visit this Knoll thrice since his story grew up under my persuasions , and once I went there in the twilight summer moonrise on what was , perhaps , a similar night to that of his adventure . Jupiter was great and splendid above the moon , and in the north and northwest the sky was green and vividly bright over the sunken sun . The Knoll stands out bare and bleak under the sky , but surrounded at a little distance by dark thickets , and as I went up towards it there was a mighty starting and scampering of ghostly or quite invisible rabbits .