o wish me out of this world will go from it before me."

It made some of them shiver.

"Have your Voices told you that you will be delivered from this prison?"

Without a doubt they had, and the judge knew it before he asked the
question.

"Ask me again in three months and I will tell you." She said it with
such a happy look, the tired prisoner! And I? And Noel Rainguesson,
drooping yonder?--why, the floods of joy went streaming through us from
crown to sole! It was all that we could do to hold still and keep from
making fatal exposure of our feelings.

She was to be set free in three months. That was what she meant; we
saw it. The Voices had told her so, and told her true--true to the very
day--May 30th. But we know now that they had mercifully hidden from her
how she was to be set free, but left her in ignorance. Home again!

That day was our understanding of it--Noel's and mine; that was our
dream; and now we would count the days, the hours, the minutes. They
would fly lightly along; they would soon be over.

Yes, we would carry our idol home; and there, far from the pomps and
tumults of the world, we would take up our happy life again and live
it out as we had begun it, in the free air and the sunshine, with the
friendly sheep and the friendly people for comrades, and the grace and
charm of the meadows, the woods, and the river always before our eyes
and their deep peace in our hearts. Yes, that was our dream, the dream
that carried us bravely through that three months to an exact and awful
fulfilment, the thought of which would have killed us, I think, if we had
foreknown it and been obliged to bear the burden of it upon our hearts
the half of those weary days.

Our reading of the prophecy was this: We believed the King's soul was
going to be smitten with remorse; and that he would privately plan a
rescue with Joan's old lieutenants, D'Alencon and the Bastard and La
Hire, and that this rescue would take place at the end of the three
months. So we made up our minds to be ready and take a hand in it.

In the present and also in later sittings Joan was urged to name the
exact day of her deliverance; but she could not do that. She had not the
permission of her Voices. Moreover, the Voices themselves did not name
the precise day. Ever since the fulfilment of the prophecy, I have
believed that Joan had the idea that her deliverance was going to come
in the form of death. But not that death! Divine as she was, da