tore his head off in a moment.

Joan was watching all along for the right time to order the assault. At
last, about nine o'clock, she cried out:

"Now--to the assault!" and the buglers blew the charge.

Instantly we saw the body of men that had been appointed to this service
move forward toward a point where the concentrated fire of our guns had
crumbled the upper half of a broad stretch of wall to ruins; we saw this
force descend into the ditch and begin to plant the scaling-ladders.
We were soon with them. The Lieutenant-General thought the assault
premature. But Joan said:

"Ah, gentle duke, are you afraid? Do you not know that I have promised
to send you home safe?"

It was warm work in the ditches. The walls were crowded with men, and
they poured avalanches of stones down upon us. There was one gigantic
Englishman who did us more hurt than any dozen of his brethren.
He always dominated the places easiest of assault, and flung down
exceedingly troublesome big stones which smashed men and ladders
both--then he would near burst himself with laughing over what he had
done. But the duke settled accounts with him. He went and found the
famous cannoneer, Jean le Lorrain, and said:

"Train your gun--kill me this demon."

He did it with the first shot. He hit the Englishman fair in the breast
and knocked him backward into the city.

The enemy's resistance was so effective and so stubborn that our people
began to show signs of doubt and dismay. Seeing this, Joan raised her
inspiring battle-cry and descended into the fosse herself, the Dwarf
helping her and the Paladin sticking bravely at her side with the
standard. She started up a scaling-ladder, but a great stone flung from
above came crashing down upon her helmet and stretched her, wounded and
stunned, upon the ground. But only for a moment. The Dwarf stood her
upon her feet, and straightway she started up the ladder again, crying:

"To the assault, friends, to the assault--the English are ours! It is the
appointed hour!"

There was a grand rush, and a fierce roar of war-cries, and we swarmed
over the ramparts like ants. The garrison fled, we pursued; Jargeau was
ours!

The Earl of Suffolk was hemmed in and surrounded, and the Duke d'Alencon
and the Bastard of Orleans demanded that he surrender himself. But he
was a proud nobleman and came of a proud race. He refused to yield his
sword to subordinates, saying:

"I will die rather. I will surrender to the Ma