high title, in very confusion.

"Oh, she will hear no bourde nor jest on this Pucelle that all the
countryside is clashing of, and that is bewitching my maid, methinks,
even from afar. My maid Elliot (so I call her from my mother's kin, but
her true name is Marion, and the French dub her Heliote) hath set all her
heart and her hope on one that is a young lass like herself, and she is
full of old soothsayings about a virgin that is to come out of an oak-
wood and deliver France--no less! For me, I misdoubt that Merlin, the
Welsh prophet on whom they set store, and the rest of the soothsayers,
are all in one tale with old Thomas Rhymer, of Ercildoune, whose
prophecies our own folk crack about by the ingle on winter nights at
home. But be it as it may, this wench of Lorraine has, these
three-quarters of a year, been about the Sieur Robert de Baudricourt, now
commanding for the King at Vaucouleurs, away in the east, praying him to
send her to the Court. She has visions, and hears voices--so she says;
and she gives Baudricourt no peace till he carries her to the King. The
story goes that, on the ill day of the Battle of the Herrings, she, being
at Vaucouleurs--a hundred leagues away and more,--saw that fight plainly,
and our countrymen fallen, manlike, around the Constable, and the French
flying like hares before a little pack of English talbots. When the evil
news came, and was approved true, Baudricourt could hold her in no
longer, and now she is on the way with half a dozen esquires and archers
of his command. The second-sight she may have--it is common enough, if
you believe the red-shanked Highlanders; but if maiden she set forth from
Vaucouleurs, great miracle it is if maiden she comes to Chinon." He
whispered this in a manner that we call "pauky," being a free man with
his tongue.

"This is a strange tale enough," I said; "the saints grant that the Maid
speaks truly!"

"But yesterday came a letter of her sending to the King," he went on,
"but never of her writing, for they say that she knows not 'A' from 'B,'
if she meets them in her voyaging. Now, nothing would serve my wilful
daughter Elliot (she being possessed, as I said, with love for this
female mystery), but that we must ride forth and be the first to meet the
Maid on her way, and offer her shelter at my poor house, if she does but
seem honest, though methinks a hostelry is good enough for one that has
ridden so far, with men for all her company. An