We now made three night marches of twelve or thirteen leagues each, riding in peace and undisturbed, being taken for a roving band of Free Companions.  Country-folk were glad to have that sort of people go by without stopping.  Still, they were very wearying marches, and not comfortable, for the bridges were few and the streams many, and as we had to ford them we found the water dismally cold, and afterward had to bed ourselves, still wet, on the frosty or snowy ground, and get warm as we might and sleep if we could, for it would not have been prudent to build fires.  Our energies languished under these hardships and deadly fatigues, but Joan’s did not.  Her step kept its spring and firmness and her eye its fire.  We could only wonder at this, we could not explain it.

But if we had had hard times before, I know not what to call the five nights that now followed, for the marches were as fatiguing, the baths as cold, and we were ambuscaded seven times in addition, and lost two novices and three veterans in the resulting fights.  The news had leaked out and gone abroad that the inspired Virgin of Vaucouleurs was making for the King with an escort, and all the roads were being watched now.

These five nights disheartened the command a good deal.  This was aggravated by a discovery which Noel made, and which he promptly made known at headquarters.  Some of the men had been trying to understand why Joan continued to be alert, vigorous, and confident while the strongest men in the company were fagged with the heavy marches and exposure and were become morose and irritable.  There, it shows you how men can have eyes and yet not see.  All their lives those men had seen their own women-folks hitched up with a cow and dragging the plow in the fields while the men did the driving.  They had also seen other evidences that women have far more endurance and patience and fortitude than men—­but what good had their seeing these things been to them?  None.  It had taught them nothing.  They were still surprised to see a girl of seventeen bear the fatigues of war better than trained veterans of the army.  Moreover, they did not reflect that a great soul, with a great purpose, can make a weak body strong and keep it so; and here was the greatest soul in the universe; but how could they know that, those dumb creatures?  No, they knew nothing, and their reasonings were of a piece with their ignorance.  They argued and discussed among themselves, with Noel listening, and arrived at the decision that Joan was a witch, and had her strange pluck and strength from Satan; so they made a plan to watch for a safe opportunity to take her life.

To have secret plottings of this sort going on in our midst was a very serious business, of course, and the knights asked Joan’s permission to hang the plotters, but she refused without hesitancy.  She said: 

“Neither these men nor any others can take my life before my mission is accomplished, therefore why should I have their blood upon my hands?  I will inform them of this, and also admonish them.  Call them before me.”