midnight
So he had passed beyond the challenge of the sentries who had stood as guardians of his boyhood and had sought to keep him among them that he might be subject to them and serve their ends . Pride after satisfaction uplifted him like long slow waves . The end he had been born to serve yet did not see had led him to escape by an unseen path and now it beckoned to him once more and a new adventure was about to be opened to him . It seemed to him that he heard notes of fitful music leaping upwards a tone and downwards a diminished fourth , upwards a tone and downwards a major third , like triple-branching flames leaping fitfully , flame after flame , out of a midnight wood . It was an elfin prelude , endless and formless ; and , as it grew wilder and faster , the flames leaping out of time , he seemed to hear from under the boughs and grasses wild creatures racing , their feet pattering like rain upon the leaves . Their feet passed in pattering tumult over his mind , the feet of hares and rabbits , the feet of harts and hinds and antelopes , until he heard them no more and remembered only a proud cadence from Newman : -- Whose feet are as the feet of harts and underneath the everlasting arms . The pride of that dim image brought back to his mind the dignity of the office he had refused .