to time,
describing over again the gory marvels they would do if ever that madman
ventured to cross their path again, for next time they would be ready for
him, and would soon teach him that if he thought he could surprise them
twice because he had surprised them once, he would find himself very
seriously mistaken, that's all.

And so, in the end, they all got back their self-respect; yes, and even
added somewhat to it; indeed when the sitting broke up they had a finer
opinion of themselves than they had ever had before.

Chapter 5 Domremy Pillaged and Burned

THEY WERE peaceful and pleasant, those young and smoothly flowing days of
ours; that is, that was the case as a rule, we being remote from the seat
of war; but at intervals roving bands approached near enough for us to
see the flush in the sky at night which marked where they were burning
some farmstead or village, and we all knew, or at least felt, that some
day they would come yet nearer, and we should have our turn. This dull
dread lay upon our spirits like a physical weight. It was greatly
augmented a couple of years after the Treaty of Troyes.

It was truly a dismal year for France. One day we had been over to have
one of our occasional pitched battles with those hated Burgundian boys of
the village of Maxey, and had been whipped, and were arriving on our side
of the river after dark, bruised and weary, when we heard the bell
ringing the tocsin. We ran all the way, and when we got to the square we
found it crowded with the excited villagers, and weirdly lighted by
smoking and flaring torches.

On the steps of the church stood a stranger, a Burgundian priest, who was
telling the people new which made them weep, and rave, and rage, and
curse, by turns. He said our old mad King was dead, and that now we and
France and the crown were the property of an English baby lying in his
cradle in London. And he urged us to give that child our allegiance, and
be its faithful servants and well-wishers; and said we should now have a
strong and stable government at last, and that in a little time the
English armies would start on their last march, and it would be a brief
one, for all that it would need to do would be to conquer what odds and
ends of our country yet remained under that rare and almost forgotten
rag, the banner of France.

The people stormed and raged at him, and you could see dozens of them
stretch their fists above the sea of torch-lighted faces a