Meanwhile, let me inform the visitor who may find himself there in the autumn, that blackberries of a very choice quality grow in those prairies of the Colonne. I devoured them steadily, while the cows chewed their cud, and my wife sketched. She sketched; but she was not happy, as she usually is when thus occupied. A cruel wind came out of the north, and chilled her to the bone. She shivered; almost she wept. I, too, in spite of blackberries, was all comfortless within, and felt an uncanny sensation in the small of my back. "Come along, Marjorie; you were quite right. It _was_ the hen who spoke. This place is bewitched." She cheered up. "How lovely! I was so afraid witches had quite died out." * * * * * Then we went home in the gloaming, by the same plucky, cheerful, little train that puffed up the hills, and chattered tumbling down them. Opposite to us, in the dimly-lit, bare apartment, a fat farmer and a slim little sister of mercy slept, nodding in time to the jerks and vibrations that shook them from head to foot. At the first station a wrinkled old woman, leaning out of the window, held so animated a debate with another on the platform, concerning peaches, that the company were constrained to chip in, as one may do in democratic France. Across the compartment came the laconic tones of an unseen listener. "Twenty sous the livre, for peaches! eh! ma foi!" [Illustration: ·ROMAN COLUMN AT CUSSY·] The train started, snorting violently; the old lady sat, firm-lipped, vigilantly on guard among her baskets of fruit. There arose around her a running commentary concerning peaches, and the ethics of trade therein. "Moi, je vous dis"--"Eh bien moi je vous dis...." "And half of them were rotten--the robber!" "Et quand même!" The old lady defended herself warmly. "Rattle, rattle, rattle," commented the train, as it plunged downhill into the pitchy darkness of the valley of Nantoux. Still the passengers babbled. I grew weary of it, and my dreams went back to St. Martin, and the Christianity he planted there. Were they really honest, these chattering peasants? I thought of all the bad money palmed off on us in Burgundy--the Italian, Spanish, Belgian rubbish; any coin at all that your carelessness or trustfulness will accept. I thought of the lumps of lead unblushingly handed to me in the dark by a Paris cabman, on the steps of St. Lazare. I thought ... I yawned ... I joined the fat farmer and the slim nun in dreamland. "Beaune Ville!" said the guard. And the drowsy company searched vacantly--every man for his pack. * * * * * During a hunt for Burgundian lore and legend among the libraries of Beaune, we found ourselves in conversation with a very entertaining bookseller, who described to us his boyhood holidays in the valley of Nantoux, and the legendary haunts of St. Martin.