e to sell it to Hugh
Kennedy, for he has of late had luck in taking two English knights
prisoners at Orleans--the only profitable trade that men now can
drive,--and the good knight dearly loves a painted book of devotion;
especially if, like this of mine, it be adorned with the loves of
Jupiter, and the Swan, and Danae, and other heathen pliskies. We were
chaffering over the price, and getting near a bargain, when in comes
Patrick Ogilvie with a tale of this second-sighted Maid, and how she had
been called to see the King, and of what befell. First, it seems, she
boded the death of that luckless limb of a sentinel, and then you took it
upon you to fulfil her saying, and so you and he were drowned, and I left
prenticeless. Little comfort to me it was to hear Kennedy and Ogilvie
praise you for a good Scot and true, and say that it was great pity of
your death."

At this hearing my heart leaped for joy, first, at my own praise from
such good knights, and next, because I saw a blink of hope, having
friends at Court. My master went on--

"Next, Ogilvie told how he had been in hall, with the Dauphin, the
Chancellor Tremouille, and some scores of knights and nobles, a great
throng. They were all waiting on this Lorrainer wench, for the Dauphin
had been told, at last, that she brought a letter from Baudricourt, but
before he would not see her. This letter had been kept from him, I guess
by whom, and there was other clash of marvels wrought by her, I know not
what. So their wisdom was set on putting her to a kind of trial, foolish
enough! A young knight was dressed in jewels and a coronet of the
King's, and the King was clad right soberly, and held himself far back in
the throng, while the other stood in front, looking big. So the wench
comes in, and, walking straight through the press of knights, with her
head high, kneels to the King, where he stood retired, and calls him
'gentle Dauphin'!

"'Nay, ma mie,' says he, ''tis not I who am the Dauphin, but his Highness
yonder,'--pointing to the young knight, who showed all his plumage like a
muircock in spring.

"Nay, gentle Dauphin," she answers, so Ogilvie said, "it is to thee that
I am sent, and no other, and I am come to save the good town of Orleans,
and to lead thee to thy sacring at Rheims."

"Here they were all struck amazed, and the King not least, who then had
some words apart with the girl. And he has given her rooms in the Tour
Coudraye within the castle;