about midnight
This was historic country that Fred was traversing , the same country that had trembled beneath the thundering march of Napoleon 's grand army more than a hundred years before , when the great Emperor had launched the mad adventure against Russia that had sealed his fate . But he did n't think of these things , except of Napoleon , as he trudged along . Once more he traveled through the night . Once more , as the first signs of morning came , he began to feel tired , and , despite the food he had carried with him which he had stopped to eat about midnight , he was hungry . And , as had been the case on the night of his tramp from Virballen , the first rays of the rising sun showed him a village . It was in a hollow , and above it the ground rose sharply to a large house , evidently very old , built of a grey stone that had been weathered by the winds and rains of centuries . It was a very old house , and strangely out of tune , it seemed to Fred , with the country though not with the times .