all in shining armour, but unhelmeted.  Then I saw that this was no knight, but the Maid herself, boden in effeir of war, {23} and so changed from what she had been that she seemed a thing divine.  If St. Michael had stepped down from a church window, leaving the dragon slain, he would have looked no otherwise than she, all gleaming with steel, and with grey eyes full of promise of victory:  the holy sword girdled about her, and a little battle-axe hanging from her saddle-girth.  She sprang on her steed, from the mounting-stone beside the door, and so, waving her hand, she cried farewell to Elliot, that stood gazing after her with shining eyes.  The people went after the Maid some way, shouting Noel! and striving to kiss her stirrup, the archers laughing, meanwhile, and bidding them yield way.  And so we came, humbly enough, into the house, where, her father being present and laughing and the door shut, Elliot threw her arms about me and wept and smiled on my breast.

“Ah, now I must lose you again,” she said; whereat I was half glad that she prized me so; half sorry, for that I knew I might not go forth with the host.  This ill news I gave them both, we now sitting quietly in the great chamber.

“Nay, thou shalt go,” said Elliot.  “Is it not so, father?  For the Maid gave her promise ere she went to Poictiers, and now she is fulfilling it.  For the gentle King has given her a household—­pages, and a maitre d’hotel, a good esquire, and these two gentlemen who rode with her from Vaucouleurs, and an almoner, Brother Jean Pasquerel, an Augustine, that the Maid’s mother sent with us from Puy, for we found her there.  And the Maid has appointed you to go with her, for that you took her part when men reviled her.  And money she has craved from the King; and Messire Aymar de Puiseux, that was your adversary, is to give you a good horse, for that you may not walk.  And, above all, the Maid has declared to me that she will bring you back to us unscathed of sword, but, for herself, she shall be wounded by an arrow under Orleans, yet shall she not die, but be healed of that wound, and shall lead the King to his sacring at Rheims.  So now, verily, for you I have no fear, but my heart is sore for the Maid’s sake, and her wound.”

None the less, she made as if she would dance for joy, and I could have done as much, not, indeed, that as then I put my faith in prophecies, but for gladness that I was to take my fortune in the wars.  So the hours passed in great mirth and good cheer.  Many things we spoke of, as concerning the mother of the Maid—­how wise she was, yet in a kind of amazement, and not free from fear, wherefore she prayed constantly for her child.