lady.

But from this day there was not a jousting held in Maudlin's revels at
which the Rusty Knight did not appear; and none from which he bore away
the crown. The procedure was always the same: at the last instant he
appeared in his ignominious arms, and stung the mockers to silence by
the glory of his sword and his undaunted proclamation of his lady. So
ardent was his manner that it was difficult not to believe him a
conqueror among men and her the loveliest of women, until the fray
began; when he was instantly overcome, and in the confusion managed to
escape. He was so cunning in this that though traps were laid to catch
him he was never traced. By degrees he became, instead of a joke, a
thorn in the flesh. It was the women now who itched to see his face,
and the men who desired to find out the Proud Rosalind; for by his
repeated assertion her beauty came to be believed in, and if the ladies
still spoke slightingly of her, the lords in their thoughts did not.
But the summer drew to its close without unraveling the mystery. The
Rusty Knight was never followed nor the Proud Rosalind found. And now
they were on the eve of a different hunting.

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. There was game in plenty, and
many men were tempted and forgot the