midnight
`` Someone left the slip-rails down , and they were all over the horse-paddock , '' he panted . `` But I took a bridle and managed to catch one , and it was easy enough to run up the other two . '' But even Constable Tyler thought the more of their misshapen leader for the feat . There was now no time to be lost , for it approached midnight , but the trio were soon cantering through the horse-paddock neck-and-neck , and the new day found them at the farther gate . The moon still poured unbroken brilliance upon that desert world of sandy stretches tufted with salt-bush and erratically overgrown with scrub . The shadow of the gate was as another gate lying ready to be hung ; for each particular wire in the fence there was a thin black stripe upon the ground . The three passed through , and came in quick time upon the edge of that scrub in which the crime had been committed .