al to one of his temperament, and why Bertrand's eyes
were so grave and dreamy, and his voice seemed to come from far
away.

"And yet I do bethink me that six months agone I did behold a scene
which seems to me to hold within its scope something of miracle and
of mystery. I have thought of it by day, and dreamed of it by
night, and the memory of it will not leave me, I trow, so long as
breath and being remain!"

We turned and looked at him--the pair of us--with eyes which
questioned better than our tongues. Bertrand and I had been
comrades and friends in boyhood; but of late years we had been much
sundered. I had not seen him for above a year, till he joined us
the previous Wednesday at Nancy, having received a letter I did
send to him from thence. He came to beg of me to visit him at his
kinsman's house, the Seigneur Robert de Baudricourt of Vaucouleurs;
and since my thirst for travel was assuaged, and my purse something
over light to go to Court, I was glad to end my wanderings for the
nonce, in the company of one whom I still loved as a brother.

From the first I had noted that Bertrand was something graver and
more thoughtful than had been his wont. Now I did look at him with
wonder in my eyes. What could he be speaking of?

He answered as though the question had passed my lips.

"It was May of this present year of grace," he said, "I mind it the
better that it was the Feast of the Ascension, and I had kept fast
and vigil, had made my confession and received the Holy Sacrament
early in the day. I was in my lodging overlooking the market place,
and hard by the Castle which as you know hangs, as it were, over
the town, guarding or threatening it, as the case may be, when a
messenger arrived from my kinsman, De Baudricourt, bidding me to a
council which he was holding at noon that day. I went to him
without delay; and he did tell me a strange tale.

"Not long since, so he said, an honest prud'homme of the
neighbouring village of Burey le Petit, Durand Laxart by name, had
asked speech with him, and had then told him that a young niece of
his, dwelling in the village of Domremy, had come to him a few days
since, saying it had been revealed to her how that she was to be
used by the God of Heaven as an instrument in His hands for the
redemption of France; and she had been told in a vision to go first
to the Seigneur de Baudricourt, who would then find means whereby
she should be sent to the Dauphin (as she called h