Hall"), lies between Ashbourne and Buxton. But it is marked on all
the maps, so perhaps it has an honourable history. The sun was dying
in red embers over the Derbyshire hills as we pedalled along. Life,
liquor, and literature lay all before us; certes, we had no thought
of ever writing a daily column! And finally, after our small
lanterns were lit and cast their little fans of brightness along the
flowing road, we ascended a rise and saw Buxton in the valley below,
twinkling with lights--

"_And when even dies, the million-tinted,
And the night has come, and planets glinted
Lo, the valley hollow
Lamp-bestarred!_"

Nor were all these ancient inns (to which our heart wistfully
returns) on British soil. There was the _Hotel de la Tour_, in
Montjoie, a quaint small town somewhere in that hilly region of the
Ardennes along the border between Luxemburg and Belgium. Our memory
is rather vague as to Montjoie, for we got there late one evening,
after more than seventy up-and-down miles on a bicycle, hypnotic
with weariness and the smell of pine trees and a great warm wind
that had buffeted us all day. But we have a dim, comfortable
remembrance of a large clean bedroom, unlighted, in which we duskily
groped and found no less than three huge beds among which we had to
choose; and we can see also a dining room brilliantly papered in
scarlet, with good old prints on the walls and great wooden beams
overhead. Two bottles of ice-cold beer linger in our thought: and
there was some excellent work done on a large pancake, one of those
durable fleshy German _Pfannkuchen_. For the odd part of it was
(unless our memory is wholly amiss) Montjoie was then (1912)