s fire. We could only wonder at this, we could not explain it.

But if we had had hard times before, I know not what to call the five
nights that now followed, for the marches were as fatiguing, the baths
as cold, and we were ambuscaded seven times in addition, and lost two
novices and three veterans in the resulting fights. The news had leaked
out and gone abroad that the inspired Virgin of Vaucouleurs was making
for the King with an escort, and all the roads were being watched now.

These five nights disheartened the command a good deal. This was
aggravated by a discovery which Noel made, and which he promptly made
known at headquarters. Some of the men had been trying to understand why
Joan continued to be alert, vigorous, and confident while the strongest
men in the company were fagged with the heavy marches and exposure and
were become morose and irritable. There, it shows you how men can have
eyes and yet not see. All their lives those men had seen their own
women-folks hitched up with a cow and dragging the plow in the fields
while the men did the driving. They had also seen other evidences that
women have far more endurance and patience and fortitude than men--but
what good had their seeing these things been to them? None. It had
taught them nothing. They were still surprised to see a girl of
seventeen bear the fatigues of war better than trained veterans of the
army. Moreover, they did not reflect that a great soul, with a great
purpose, can make a weak body strong and keep it so; and here was the
greatest soul in the universe; but how could they know that, those dumb
creatures? No, they knew nothing, and their reasonings were of a piece
with their ignorance. They argued and discussed among themselves, with
Noel listening, and arrived at the decision that Joan was a witch, and
had her strange pluck and strength from Satan; so they made a plan to
watch for a safe opportunity to take her life.

To have secret plottings of this sort going on in our midst was a very
serious business, of course, and the knights asked Joan's permission to
hang the plotters, but she refused without hesitancy. She said:

"Neither these men nor any others can take my life before my mission is
accomplished, therefore why should I have their blood upon my hands? I
will inform them of this, and also admonish them. Call them before me."

When they came she made that statement to them in a plain matter-of-fact
way, and just as if the thou