like.

We had expected to hear the rush of a pursuing force behind us, for
we thought that the real Captain Raymond would arrive and suggest that
perhaps the troop that had been mistaken for his belonged to the Virgin
of Vaucouleurs; but he must have been delayed seriously, for when we
resumed our march beyond the river there were no sounds behind us except
those which the storm was furnishing.

I said that Joan had harvested a good many compliments intended for
Captain Raymond, and that he would find nothing of a crop left but a
dry stubble of reprimands when he got back, and a commander just in the
humor to superintend the gathering of it in.

Joan said:

"It will be as you say, no doubt; for the commander took a troop for
granted, in the night and unchallenged, and would have camped without
sending a force to destroy the bridge if he had been left unadvised,
and none are so ready to find fault with others as those who do things
worthy of blame themselves."

The Sieur Bertrand was amused at Joan's naive way of referring to her
advice as if it had been a valuable present to a hostile leader who was
saved by it from making a censurable blunder of omission, and then he
went on to admire how ingeniously she had deceived that man and yet had
not told him anything that was not the truth. This troubled Joan, and
she said:

"I thought he was deceiving himself. I forbore to tell him lies, for
that would have been wrong; but if my truths deceived him, perhaps that
made them lies, and I am to blame. I would God I knew if I have done
wrong."

She was assured that she had done right, and that in the perils and
necessities of war deceptions that help one's own cause and hurt the
enemy's were always permissible; but she was not quite satisfied with
that, and thought that even when a great cause was in danger one ought
to have the privilege of trying honorable ways first. Jean said:

"Joan, you told us yourself that you were going to Uncle Laxart's to
nurse his wife, but you didn't say you were going further, yet you did
go on to Vaucouleurs. There!"

"I see now," said Joan, sorrowfully. "I told no lie, yet I deceived. I
had tried all other ways first, but I could not get away, and I had
to get away. My mission required it. I did wrong, I think, and am to
blame."

She was silent a moment, turning the matter over in her mind, then she
added, with quiet decision, "But the thing itself was right, and I would
do it again."