In the meantime, however, there were other adventures in store for her.  From Melun to Lagny was no long journey, but it was through a country full of enemies in which she must have been subject to attack at every corner of every road or field.  And she had not been long in the latter place which is said to have had a garrison of Scots, when news came of the passing of a band of Burgundians, a troop of raiders indeed, ravaging the country, taking advantage of the war to rob and lay waste churches, villages, and the growing fields wherever they passed.  The troops was led by Franquet d’Arras, a famous “pillard,” robber of God and man.  Jeanne set out to encounter this bandit with a party of some four hundred men, and various noble companions, among whom, however, we find no name familiar in her previous career, a certain Hugh Kennedy, a Scot, who is to be met with in various records of fighting, being one of the most notable among them.  Franquet’s band fought vigorously but were cut to pieces, and the leader was taken prisoner.  When this man was brought back to Lagny, a prisoner to be ransomed, and whom Jeanne desired to exchange for one of her own side, the law laid claim to him as a criminal.  He was a prisoner of war:  what was it the Maid’s duty to do?  The question is hotly debated by the historians and it was brought against her at her trial.  He was a murderer, a robber, the scourge of the country—­especially to the poor whom Jeanne protected and cared for everywhere, was he pitiless and cruel.  She gave him up to justice, and he was tried, condemned, and beheaded.  If it was wrong from a military point of view, it was her only error, and shows how little there was with which to reproach her.

In Lagny other things passed of a more private nature.  Every day and all day long her “voices” repeated their message in her ears.  “Before the St. Jean.”  She repeated it to some of her closest comrades but left herself no time to dwell upon it.  Still worse than the giving up of Franquet was the supposed resuscitation of a child, born dead, which its parents implored her to pray for that it might live again to be baptised.  She explained the story to her judges afterwards.  It was the habit of the time, nay, we believe continues to this day in some primitive places, to lay the dead infant on the altar in such a case, in hope of a miracle.  “It is true,” said Jeanne, “that the maidens of the town were all assembled in the church praying God to restore life that it might be baptised.  It is also true that I went and prayed with them.  The child opened its eyes, yawned three or four times, was christened and died.  This is all I know.”  The miracle is not one that will find much credit nowadays.  But the devout custom was at least simple and intelligible enough, though it afforded an excellent occasion to attribute witchcraft to the one among those maidens who was not of Lagny but of God.