hing,
jeering, cursing, and volleying forth indecencies and bestialities like
a drunken fiend. It was a thing to be expected; soldiering makes few
saints. Many of the onlookers laughed, others were indifferent, none
was surprised. But presently in his mad caperings the freed man capered
within reach of the waiting file, and another Burgundian promptly
slipped a knife through his neck, and down he went with a death-shriek,
his brilliant artery blood spurting ten feet as straight and bright as a
ray of light. There was a great burst of jolly laughter all around from
friend and foe alike; and thus closed one of the pleasantest incidents
of my checkered military life.

And now came Joan hurrying, and deeply troubled. She considered the
claim of the garrison, then said:

"You have right upon your side. It is plain. It was a careless word to
put in the treaty, and covers too much. But ye may not take these poor
men away. They are French, and I will not have it. The King shall ransom
them, every one. Wait till I send you word from him; and hurt no hair of
their heads; for I tell you, I who speak, that that would cost you very
dear."

That settled it. The prisoners were safe for one while, anyway. Then she
rode back eagerly and required that thing of the King, and would listen
to no paltering and no excuses. So the King told her to have her way,
and she rode straight back and bought the captives free in his name and
let them go.

35 The Heir of France is Crowned

IT WAS here hat we saw again the Grand Master of the King's Household,
in whose castle Joan was guest when she tarried at Chinon in those
first days of her coming out of her own country. She made him Bailiff of
Troyes now by the King's permission.

And now we marched again; Chalons surrendered to us; and there by
Chalons in a talk, Joan, being asked if she had no fears for the future,
said yes, one--treachery. Who would believe it? who could dream it? And
yet in a sense it was prophecy. Truly, man is a pitiful animal.

We marched, marched, kept on marching; and at last, on the 16th of July,
we came in sight of our goal, and saw the great cathedraled towers of
Rheims rise out of the distance! Huzza after huzza swept the army from
van to rear; and as for Joan of Arc, there where she sat her horse
gazing, clothed all in white armor, dreamy, beautiful, and in her face
a deep, deep joy, a joy not of earth, oh, she was not flesh, she was a
spirit! Her sublime