y of that bridge from the left
bank through the country called Sologne.

Yet that keep, Les Tourelles, had not been a lucky prize to our enemies
of England. For their great captain, the Lord Salisbury, had a custom to
watch them of Orleans and their artillery from a window in that tower,
and, to guard him from arrow-shots, he had a golden shield pierced with
little holes to look through, that he held before his face. One day he
came into this turret when they who worked the guns in Orleans were all
at their meat. But it so chanced that two boys, playing truant from
school, went into a niche of the wall, where was a cannon loaded and
aimed at Les Tourelles. They, seeing the gleam of the golden shield at
the window of the turret, set match to the touch-hole of the cannon, and,
as Heaven would have it, the ball struck a splinter of stone from the
side of the window, which, breaking through the golden shield, slew my
Lord of Salisbury, a good knight. Thus plainly that tower was to be of
little comfort to the English.

None the less, as they held Les Tourelles and the outer landward
boulevard thereof, the English built but few works on the left side of
the river, namely, Champ St. Prive, that guarded the road by the left
bank from Blois; Les Augustins, that was a little inland from the
boulevard of Les Tourelles, so that no enemy might pass between these two
holds; and St. Jean le Blanc, that was higher up the river, and a hold of
no great strength. On the Orleans side, to guard the road from Burgundy,
the English had but one fort, St. Loup, for Burgundy and the north were
of their part, and by this way they expected no enemy. But all about
Orleans, on the right bank of the river, to keep the path from Blois on
that hand, the English had builded many great bastilles, and had joined
them by hollow ways, wherein, as I said, they lived at ease, as men in a
secure city underground. And the skill of it was to stop convoys of
food, and starve them of Orleans, for to take the town by open force the
English might in nowise avail, they being but some four thousand men-at-
arms.

Thus Matters stood, and it was the Maid's mind to march her men and all
the cattle clean through and past the English bastilles on the right side
of the river, and by inspiration she well knew that no man would come
forth against us. Moreover, she saw not how, by the other way, and the
left bank, the cattle might be ferried across, and the great co