the
days of yore. Oh, how joyous were our hearts! Now did we believe
truly that the tide had turned, and that we were marching on to
victory.

But upon the Maid's face a shadow might often be seen to rest; and
once or twice when I would ask her of it, she replied in a low,
sorrowful voice:

"My year is well-nigh ended. Something looms before me. My voices
have told me to be ready for what is coming. I fear me it will be
my fate to fall into the hands of the foe!"

I would not believe it! Almost I was resolved to plunge mine own
dagger into her heart sooner than she should fall into the hand of
the pitiless English. But woe is me! I was not at her side that
dreadful evening at Compiegne, when this terrible mishap befell. I
had been stricken down in that horrid death trap, when, hemmed in
between the ranks of the Burgundians and English, we found our
retreat into the city cut off.

Was it treachery? Was it incapacity upon the part of the leaders of
the garrison, or what was the reason that no rush from the city
behind took the English in the rear, and effected the rescue of the
Maid?

I know not--I have never known--all to me is black mystery. I was
one of those to see the peril first, and with Bertrand and Guy de
Laval beside me, to charge furiously upon the advancing foe, crying
aloud to others to close round the Maid and bear her away into
safety, whilst we engaged the enemy and gave them time.

That is all I know. All the rest vanishes in the mists. When these
mists cleared away, Bertrand and I were in the home of Sir Guy,
tended by his mother and grandmother--both of whom had seen and
loved well the wonderful Maid--and she was in a terrible prison,
some said an iron cage, guarded by brutal English soldiers, and
declared a witch or a sorceress, not fit to live, nor to die a
soldier's death, but only to perish at the stake as an outcast from
God and man.

Months had passed since the battle of Compiegne. Fever had had me
fast in its grip all that while, and the news I heard on recovery
brought it all back again. Bertrand and Guy were in little better
case. We were like pale ghosts of our former selves during those
winter months, when, hemmed in by snow, we could learn so little
news from without, and could only eat out our hearts in rage and
grief.

With the spring came the news of the trial at Rouen--the bitter
hatred of Bishop Cauchon--the awful consummation he had vowed to
bring about.

I know not wh