ep those men in that town half a day. They waste the glory of
being the first to carry the great news to Domremy--the taxes remitted
forever!--and hear the bells clang and clatter, and the people cheer and
shout? Oh, not they. Patay and Orleans and the Coronation were events
which in a vague way these men understood to be colossal; but they were
colossal mists, films, abstractions; this was a gigantic reality!

When I got there, do you suppose they were abed! Quite the reverse.
They and the rest were as mellow as mellow could be; and the Paladin was
doing his battles in great style, and the old peasants were endangering
the building with their applause. He was doing Patay now; and was
bending his big frame forward and laying out the positions and movements
with a rake here and a rake there of his formidable sword on the floor,
and the peasants were stooped over with their hands on their spread
knees observing with excited eyes and ripping out ejaculations of wonder
and admiration all along:

"Yes, here we were, waiting--waiting for the word; our horses fidgeting
and snorting and dancing to get away, we lying back on the bridles till
our bodies fairly slanted to the rear; the word rang out at last--'Go!'
and we went!

"Went? There was nothing like it ever seen! Where we swept by squads of
scampering English, the mere wind of our passage laid them flat in
piles and rows! Then we plunged into the ruck of Fastolfe's frantic
battle-corps and tore through it like a hurricane, leaving a causeway of
the dead stretching far behind; no tarrying, no slacking rein, but on!
on! on! far yonder in the distance lay our prey--Talbot and his host
looming vast and dark like a storm-cloud brooding on the sea! Down we
swooped upon them, glooming all the air with a quivering pall of dead
leaves flung up by the whirlwind of our flight. In another moment
we should have struck them as world strikes world when disorbited
constellations crash into the Milky way, but by misfortune and the
inscrutable dispensation of God I was recognized! Talbot turned white,
and shouting, 'Save yourselves, it is the Standard-Bearer of Joan of
Arc!' drove his spurs home till they met in the middle of his horse's
entrails, and fled the field with his billowing multitudes at his back!
I could have cursed myself for not putting on a disguise. I saw reproach
in the eyes of her Excellency, and was bitterly ashamed. I had caused
what seemed an irreparable disaster. Ano