before the image of Our Lady. The voice was even as you said
that day--the sweetest of voices. I knelt beside her, and prayed aloud
for her and for France. She rested her hand on my hair--her hair is
black, and cut 'en ronde' like a man's. It is true that they say, she
dresses in man's garb. We came forth together, and I put my hand into
hers, and said, 'I believe in you; if none other believes, yet do I
believe.' Then she wept, and she kissed me; she is to visit me here to-
morrow, la fille de Dieu--"

She drew a long sob, and struck her hand hard on the table; then, keeping
her back ever towards me, she fled swiftly from the room. I was
amazed--so light of heart as she commonly seemed, and of late
disdainful--to find her in this passion. Yet it was to me that she had
spoken--to me that she had opened her heart. Now I guessed that, if I
was ever to win her, it must be through this Pucelle, on whom her mind
was so strangely bent. So I prayed that, if it might be God's will, He
would prosper the Maid, and let me be her loyal servitor, and at last
bring me to my desire.

Something also I dreamed, as young men will who have read many romances,
of myself made a knight for great feats of arms, and wearing in my salade
my lady's favour, and breaking a spear on Talbot, or Fastolf, or
Glasdale, in some last great victory for France.

Then shone on my eyesight, as it were, the picture of these two children,
for they were little more, Elliot and the Maid, kneeling together in the
chapel of St. Martin, the gold hair and the black blended; and what were
they two alone against this world and the prince of this world? Alas,
how much, and again how little, doth prayer avail us! These thoughts
were in my mind all day, while serving and answering customers, and
carrying my master's wares about the town, and up to the castle on the
cliff, where the soldiers and sentries now knew me well enough, and the
Scots archers treated me kindly. But as for Elliot, she was like her
first self again, and merrier than common with her father, to whom, as
far as my knowledge went, she said not a word about the meeting in the
crypt of St. Martin's chapel, though to me she had spoken so freely. This
gave me some hope; but when I would have tried to ask her a question, she
only gazed at me in a manner that abashed me, and turned off to toy with
her jackanapes. Whereby I went to my bed perplexed, and with a heavy
heart, as one that was not