ad received her wound, and standing 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. There, hand to hand, we fought like wild beasts, for
there was no give-up to those English--there was no way to convince one
of those people but to kill him, and even then he doubted. At least so
it was thought, in those days, and maintained by many.

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 fire-boat 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.

"Ah, 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 Williams Glasdale, a most
valorous knight. He was clothed all in steel; so he plunged under 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!

The seven months' beleaguerment was ended, the thing which the