d the bounds of this realm. Also, lastly, concerning a
certain marvellous Maiden, who recovered the kingdom of France out of the
hands of the tyrant, Henry, King of England. The aforesaid Maiden I saw,
was conversant with, and was in her company in her said recovery of
France, and till her life's end I was ever present." After "I was ever
present" the copies add "etc.," perhaps a sign of omission. The monkish
author probably said more about the heroine of his youth, and this the
copyists have chosen to leave out.

The author never fulfilled this promise of telling, in Latin, the history
of the Maid as her career was seen by a Scottish ally and friend. Nor
did he ever explain how a Scot, and a foe of England, succeeded in being
present at the Maiden's martyrdom in Rouen. At least he never fulfilled
his promise, as far as any of the six Latin MSS. of his Chronicle are
concerned. Every one of these MSS.--doubtless following their incomplete
original--breaks off short in the middle of the second sentence of
Chapter xxxii. Book xii. Here is the brief fragment which that chapter
contains:--

"In those days the Lord stirred up the spirit of a certain marvellous
Maiden, born on the borders of France, in the duchy of Lorraine, and the
see of Toul, towards the Imperial territories. This Maiden her father
and mother employed in tending sheep; daily, too, did she handle the
distaff; man's love she knew not; no sin, as it is said, was found in
her, to her innocence the neighbours bore witness . . . "

Here the Latin narrative of the one man who followed Jeanne d'Arc through
good and evil to her life's end breaks off abruptly. The author does not
give his name; even the name of the Abbot at whose command he wrote "is
left blank, as if it had been erased in the original" (Mr. Felix Skene,
"Liber Pluscardensis," in the "Historians of Scotland," vii. p. 18). It
might be guessed that the original fell into English hands between 1461
and 1489, and that they blotted out the name of the author, and destroyed
a most valuable record of their conqueror and their victim, Jeanne d'Arc.

Against this theory we have to set the explanation here offered by Norman
Leslie, our author, in the Ratisbon Scots College's French MS., of which
this work is a translation. Leslie never finished his Latin Chronicle,
but he wrote, in French, the narrative which follows, decorating it with
the designs which Mr. Selwyn Image has carefully copied in b