out of luck, and surely that was no crime at that time in France. Now
that his stomach was proved to be innocent, it was allowed to make itself
at home; and as soon as it was well filled and needed nothing more, the
man unwound his tongue and turned it loose, and it was really a noble one
to go. He had been in the wars for years, and the things he told and the
way he told them fired everybody's patriotism away up high, and set all
hearts to thumping and all pulses to leaping; then, before anybody
rightly knew how the change was made, he was leading us a sublime march
through the ancient glories of France, and in fancy we saw the titanic
forms of the twelve paladins rise out of the mists of the past and face
their fate; we heard the tread of the innumerable hosts sweeping down to
shut them in; we saw this human tide flow and ebb, ebb and flow, and
waste away before that little band of heroes; we saw each detail pass
before us of that most stupendous, most disastrous, yet most adored and
glorious day in French legendary history; here and there and yonder,
across that vast field of the dead and dying, we saw this and that and
the other paladin dealing his prodigious blows with weary arm and failing
strength, and one by one we saw them fall, till only one remained--he
that was without peer, he whose name gives name to the Song of Songs, the
song which no Frenchman can hear and keep his feelings down and his pride
of country cool; then, grandest and pitifulest scene of all, we saw his
own pathetic death; and out stillness, as we sat with parted lips and
breathless, hanging upon this man's words, gave us a sense of the awful
stillness that reigned in that field of slaughter when that last
surviving soul had passed.

And now, in this solemn hush, the stranger gave Joan a pat or two on the
head and said:

"Little maid--whom God keep!--you have brought me from death to life this