to superintend the gathering of it in.

Joan said:

"It will be as you say, no doubt; for the commander took a troop for
granted, in the night and unchallenged, and would have camped without
sending a force to destroy the bridge if he had been left unadvised, and
none are so ready to find fault with others as those who do things worthy
of blame themselves."

The Sieur Bertrand was amused at Joan's naive way of referring to her
advice as if it had been a valuable present to a hostile leader who was
saved by it from making a censurable blunder of omission, and then he
went on to admire how ingeniously she had deceived that man and yet had
not told him anything that was not the truth. This troubled Joan, and she
said:

"I thought he was deceiving himself. I forbore to tell him lies, for that
would have been wrong; but if my truths deceived him, perhaps that made
them lies, and I am to blame. I would God I knew if I have done wrong."

She was assured that she had done right, and that in the perils and
necessities of war deceptions that help one's own cause and hurt the
enemy's were always permissible; but she was not quite satisfied with
that, and thought that even when a great cause was in danger one ought to
have the privilege of trying honorable ways first. Jean said:

"Joan, you told us yourself that you were going to Uncle Laxart's to
nurse his wife, but you didn't say you were going further, yet you did go
on to Vaucouleurs. There!"