With that the stranger drew forth and flourished a blade of so surpassing a kind that the knights, in whom scorn had vanquished mirth, found envy vanquishing scorn. As for the ladies, they had ceased to smile at the mention of Rosalind, whom none had seen, though all had heard of the girl who had been turned from her ruin at Maudlin's whim; and that this ragged lady should be vaunted over their heads was an insult only equaled by the presence among their shining champions of the Rusty Knight. For by this name only was he spoken thereafter.
Now you may think that the imperious stranger who warned his opponents against laughing before their time, might well have been warned against crowing before his. And alas! it transpired that he crowed not as the cock crows, who knows the sun will rise; for at the first clash he fell, almost unnoticed. And when the combatants disengaged, he had disappeared. He was a subject for much mirth that evening; though the men rankled for his sword and the women for a sight of his 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 prize they sought. The hunt separated, some going this way and some that. And in the evening all met again in Amberley. And some had game to show and some had none. And one had seen the hart.
When he said so a cry went up from the company, and they pressed round to hear his tale, and it was a strange one.