ntain, and heard the bells she
loved so much. It was good for you, I know."

"Her prayers were everywhere," Jacqueline replied. "Everywhere she heard
the voices that called her to come and deliver France. But her father
did not believe in her. He persecuted Jeanne."

"A man's foes are of his own household," said Victor. "You see the same
thing now. It is the very family of Christ--yes! so they dare call
it--who are going to tear and rend Leclerc to-morrow for believing the
words of Christ. A hundred judges settled that Jeanne should be burned;
and for believing such words as are in these books"--

"Read me those words," said Jacqueline.

So they turned from speaking of Joan and her work, to contemplate
another style of heroism, and to question their own hearts.

Jacqueline Gabrie had lived through eighteen years of hardship and
exposure. She was strong, contented, resolute. Left to herself, she
would probably have suffered no disturbance of her creed,--would have
lived and died conforming to the letter of its law. But thrown under
the influence of those who did agitate the subject, she was brave and
clear-headed. She listened now, while, according to her wish, her
neighbor read,--listened with clear intelligence, intent on the truth.
That, or any truth, accepted, she would hardly shrink from whatever it
involved. This was the reason why she had really feared to ask the Holy
Ghost's enlightenment! So well she understood herself! Truth was truth,
and, if received, to be abided by. She could not hold it loosely. She
could not trifle with it. She was born in Domremy. She had played under
the Fairy Oak. She knew the woods where Joan wandered when she sought
her saintly solitude. The fact was acting on her as an inspiration,
when Domremy became a memory, when she labored far away from the wooded
Vosges and the meadows of Lorraine.

She listened to the reading, as girls do not always listen when they sit
in the presence of a reader such as young Le Roy.

And let it here be understood--that the conclusion bring no sorrow, and
no sense of wrong to those who turn these pages, thinking to find the
climax dear to half-fledged imagination, incapable from inexperience of
any deeper truth, (I render them all homage!)--this story is not told
for any sake but truth's.

This Jacqueline did listen to this Victor, thinking actually of the
words he read. She looked at him really to ascertain whether her
apprehension of these things