midnight
For now all the days were to be given up to the pursuit of the rumored hart , whom none had yet beheld ; and Queen Maudlin said , `` For a month we will hunt by day and dance by night , and if by that time no man can boast of bringing the hart to bay and no woman of owning his antlers , we will acknowledge ourselves outwitted ; and so go back to Adur . And it may prove that we have been brought to Arun by an idle tale , to hunt a myth ; but be that as it may , see to your bowstrings , for to-morrow we ride forth . '' And the men laid by their swords and filled their quivers . And in the midnight Rosalind came once more from her secret lair to Bury , and laying her purse by the ferry called softly : `` Wayland Smith , give me a bow ! '' And in the dawn , before people were astir , she found a bow the unlike of any fashioned by mortal craft , and a quiverful of true arrows ; and for these the god had taken his penny fee . On a lovely day of autumn the chase began . And the red deer and the red fox started from their covers ; and the small rabbits stopped their kitten-play on the steep warrens of the Downs , and fled into their burrows ; and birds whirred up in screaming coveys , and the kestrel hovered high and motionless on the watch .