sticks and stones. Joan did not remember having taken part in
those battles, but she had often seen her brothers and the Domremy boys
come home all bruised and bleeding.

THE RAID OF DOMREMY

[Illustration: Joan hears the Voice]

Once Joan saw more of war than these schoolboy bickers. It was in 1425,
when she was a girl of thirteen. There was a kind of robber chief on the
English side, a man named Henri d'Orly, from Savoy, who dwelt in the
castle of Doulevant. There he and his band of armed men lived and drank
and plundered far and near. One day there galloped into Domremy a
squadron of spearmen, who rode through the fields driving together the
cattle of the villagers, among them the cows of Joan's father. The
country people could make no resistance; they were glad enough if their
houses were not burned. So off rode Henri d'Orly's men, driving the
cattle with their spear-points along the track to the castle of
Doulevant. But cows are not fast travellers, and when the robbers had
reached a little village called Dommartin le France they rested, and
went to the tavern to make merry. But by this time a lady, Madame
d'Ogevillier, had sent in all haste to the Count de Vaudemont to tell
him how the villagers of Domremy had been ruined. So he called his
squire, Barthelemy de Clefmont, and bade him summon his spears and mount
and ride. It reminds us of the old Scottish ballad, where Jamie Telfer
of the Fair Dodhead has seen all his cattle driven out of his stalls by
the English; and he runs to Branxholme and warns the water, and they
with Harden pursue the English, defeat them, and recover Telfer's kye,
with a great spoil out of England. Just so Barthelemy de Clefmont, with
seven or eight lances, galloped down the path to Dommartin le France.
There they found the cattle, and d'Orly's men fled like cowards. So
Barthelemy with his comrades was returning very joyously, when Henri
d'Orly rode up with a troop of horse and followed hard after Barthelemy.
He was wounded by a lance, but he cut his way through d'Orly's men, and
also brought the cattle back safely--a very gallant deed of arms. We may
fancy the delight of the villagers when 'the kye cam' hame.' It may have
been now that an event happened, of which Joan does not tell us herself,
but which was reported by the king's seneschal, in June 1429, when Joan
had just begun her wonderful career. The children of the village, says
the seneschal, were running races and leaping in wi