Soon after six o'clock I dressed and went out. I could remain in that chamber no longer. I wandered through the quaint old village, already agog, for Arnay-le-Duc retires early and is astir with the rising of the sun. Ascending the hill, I had a look at the round frowning towers of the ancient stronghold of the Counts d'Arnay, now, alas! grey, weather-beaten, and ruined. In them a last stand was made by a party of the 79th Regiment of Infantry against the Prussians in 1870, when the latter brought some field-pieces to bear upon the place and completed the ruin which time had long ago begun. Part of the village had afterwards been burned by the enemy, who had already devastated the whole of the smiling countryside of the Cote d'Or, and laid bare the valley of the Yonne with fire and sword. As I stood beneath the battered walls where great ugly holes showed as mute evidence of the destruction wrought by the German guns, a beautiful panorama of sloping wine-lands, of river and rich pastures spread before me, while behind lay the long open road to Lyons, fringed on each side by high poplars planted at regular intervals and running straight as an arrow across the blue distant plain to old-world Macon. Over that road we sped two hours later at a speed which would never be allowed in England, and raising a perfect wall of dust behind us. Asta, seated between Shaw and myself, seemed unusually bright and happy, for she laughed merrily, and declared herself delighted with the novelty and change of the journey. "What was the matter with you early this morning, Kemball?" inquired my host presently with a laugh. "You woke me up suddenly, and I believed that you were unwell!" "No," I said. "On the contrary, I was awake, and I heard you sigh and groan, therefore I believed you were ill." "You were awake?" he echoed, regarding me sharply through his dark spectacles. "Then--then I must have had the nightmare or something, eh?" "Probably you had," I said. Then I added, "I didn't pass a very good-night myself." "I hate sleeping in strange beds," Asta declared. "One has to get used to them on a motor-tour," remarked Shaw, leaning back again, his face set straight before him. I was half inclined to relate my weird experience, yet I felt that if I did Asta might only regard me as a frightened fool. Therefore the subject dropped when next moment, as the road ran over the hillside, we burst forth into admiration of the wide and magnificent panorama with a splendid old chateau with numberless round-slated turrets, perched upon a huge rock rising from the valley in the foreground--a huge, mediaeval fortress, yet still inhabited. Below clustered the sloping roofs of a small village within the ponderous walls of the chateau, entrance to which was by two ancient gates, with guard-houses built above them--a place which long ago had been the stronghold of one of the robber-barons of the Yonne.