Quite illogically it seemed to me that January evening that this
American soldier was the symbol of the power that had come in her
stead.

The barking of the dog had awakened a bowed old Mother Hubbard lady.
She opened the door of her diminutive castle and peered across the
threshold, jingling her keys.

Would we come in? Ah, Monsieur from America was there! He was always
there when he was not training, playing with the children and rolling
cigarettes. And Monsieur, the English officer, perhaps he did not
know that she was descended from Joan's family. Oh, yes, there was no
mistake about it; that was why she had been made custodian. She must
light the lamp. There! That was better. There was not much to see, but
if we would follow....

We stepped down into a flagged room like a cellar--cold, ascetic
and bare. There was a big open fire-place, with a chimney hooded by
massive masonry and blackened by the fires of immemorial winters. This
was where Joan's parents had lived. She had probably been born here.
The picture that formed in my mind was not of Joan, but that other
woman unknown to history--her mother, who after Joan had left the
village and rumours of her battles and banquets drifted back, must
have sat there staring into the blazing logs, her peasant's hands
folded in her lap, brooding, wondering, hoping, fearing--fearing as
the mothers of soldiers have throughout the ages.

And this was Joan's brother's room--a cheerless place of hewn stone.
What kind of a man could he have been? What were his reflections as
he went about his farm-work and thought of his sister at the head of