tanding there in
the rain of bolts and arrows, she ordered the paladin to let her
long standard blow free, and to note when its fringes should touch
the fortress. Presently he said:

"It touches."

"Now, then," said Joan to the waiting battalions, "the place is
yours--enter in! Bugles, sound the assault! Now, then--all
together--go!"

And go it was. You never saw anything like it. We swarmed up the
ladders and over the battlements like a wave--and the place was our
property. Why, one might live a thousand years and never see so
gorgeous a thing as that again....

We were busy and never heard the five cannon-shots fired, but they
were fired a moment after Joan had ordered the assault; and so,
while we were hammering and being hammered in the smaller fortress,
the reserve on the Orleans side poured across the bridge and
attacked the Tourelles from that side. A fireboat was brought down
and moored under the drawbridge which connected the Tourelles with
our boulevard; wherefore, when at last we drove our English ahead of
us, and they tried to cross that drawbridge and join their friends
in the Tourelles, the burning timbers gave way under them and
emptied them in a mass into the river in their heavy armor--and a
pitiful sight it was to see brave men die such a death as that.

"God pity them!" said Joan, and wept to see that sorrowful
spectacle. She said those gentle words and wept those compassionate
tears, although one of those perishing men had grossly insulted her
with a coarse name three days before when she had sent him a message
asking him to surrender. That was their leader, Sir William
Glasdale, a most valorous knight. He was clothed all in steel; so
he plunged under the water like a lance, and of course came up no
more.

We soon patched a sort of bridge together and threw ourselves
against the last stronghold of the English power that barred Orleans
from friends and supplies. Before the sun was quite down Joan's
forever memorable day's work was finished, her banner floated from
the fortress of the Tourelles, her promise was fulfilled, she had
raised the siege of Orleans!

England had resented the Yankee, but it welcomed Joan. Andrew Lang
adored it, and some years later contemplated dedicating his own book,
'The Maid of France', to Mark Twain.'--[His letter proposin