told hundreds of years hence when it matters no more to them whether
they died by shot and steel on the banks of the Shangani, or elsewhere
in age and sickness. At least through the fatal storm of war they have
attained to peace and honour, and there within the circle of the ruins
of Zimbabwe they sleep their sleep, envied of some and revered by all.
Surely it is no small thing to have attained to such a death, and
England may be proud of her sons who won it.

_THE LIFE AND DEATH OF JOAN THE MAID_

I

THE FAIRIES' TREE

FOUR hundred and seventy years ago, the children of Domremy, a little
village near the Meuse, on the borders of France and Lorraine, used to
meet and dance and sing beneath a beautiful beech-tree, 'lovely as a
lily.' They called it 'The Fairy Tree,' or 'The Good Ladies' Lodge,'
meaning the fairies by the words 'Good Ladies.' Among these children was
one named Jeanne (born 1412), the daughter of an honest farmer, Jacques
d'Arc. Jeanne sang more than she danced, and though she carried garlands
like the other boys and girls, and hung them on the boughs of the
Fairies' Tree, she liked better to take the flowers into the parish
church, and lay them on the altars of St. Margaret and St. Catherine. It
was said among the villagers that Jeanne's godmother had once seen the
fairies dancing; but though some of the older people believed in the
Good Ladies, it does not seem that Jeanne and the other children had
faith in them or thought much about them. They only went to the tree and
to a neighbouring fairy well to eat cakes and laugh and play. Yet these
fairies were destined to be fatal to Jeanne d'Arc, JOAN THE MAIDEN, and
her innocent childish sports were to bring her to the stake and the
death by fire. For she was that famed Jeanne la Pucelle, the bravest,
kindest, best, and wisest of women, whose tale is the saddest, the most
wonderful, and the most glorious page in the history of the world. It is
a page which no good Englishman and no true Frenchman can read without
sorrow and bitter shame, for the English burned Joan with the help of
bad Frenchmen, and the French of her party did not pay a _sou_, or write
a line, or strike a stroke to save her. But the Scottish, at least, have
no share in the disgrace. The Scottish archers fought on Joan's side;
the only portrait of herself that Joan ever saw belonged to a Scottish
man-at-arms; their historians praised her as she deserved; and a
Scottish priest f