us sit. Then she turned and saw that the two old men had gotten up too,
and were standing in an embarrassed and unmilitary way; which made her
want to laugh, but she kept it in, as not wishing to hurt them; and got
them to their seats and snuggled down between them, and took a hand of
each of them upon her knees and nestled her own hands in them, and said:

"Now we will nave no more ceremony, but be kin and playmates as in other
times; for I am done with the great wars now, and you two will take me
home with you, and I shall see--" She stopped, and for a moment her happy
face sobered, as if a doubt or a presentiment had flitted through her
mind; then it cleared again, and she said, with a passionate yearning,
"Oh, if the day were but come and we could start!"

The old father was surprised, and said:

"Why, child, are you in earnest? Would you leave doing these wonders that
make you to be praised by everybody while there is still so much glory to
be won; and would you go out from this grand comradeship with princes and
generals to be a drudging villager again and a nobody? It is not
rational."

"No," said the uncle, Laxart, "it is amazing to hear, and indeed not
understandable. It is a stranger thing to hear her say she will stop the
soldiering that it was to hear her say she would begin it; and I who
speak to you can say in all truth that that was the strangest word that
ever I had heard till this day and hour. I would it could be explained."

"It is not difficult," said Joan. "I was not ever fond of wounds and
suffering, nor fitted by my nature to inflict them; and quarrelings did
always distress me, and noise and tumult were against my liking, my