.

HOW THE MAID CLEARED THE KING'S WAY.
We started forth from Selles, where the army which was to do this work had assembled.

It was not so great a force as it would have been but for the hesitations of the King, and the delays imposed by his Council.

For the men who had marched from Orleans, flushed with victory, eager to rush headlong upon the foe and drive them back to their own shores, had grown weary of the long waiting, and had been infected by the timidity or the treachery of those about the Court.
They had melted away by little and little, carrying with them the booty they had found in the English bastilles round Orleans, glad to return to their homes and their families without further fighting, though had the Maid been permitted to place herself at their head at once, as she did desire, they would have followed her to the death.
Still, when all was said and done, it was a gallant troop that responded to her call and mustered at her summons.

The magic of her name still thrilled all hearts, and throughout the march of events which followed, it was always the common soldiers who trusted implicitly in the Maid; they left doubts and disputings and unworthy jealousies to the officers and the statesmen.
The Maid went forth with a greater glory and honour than has, methinks, ever been bestowed upon woman before--certainly upon no humbly-born maiden of seventeen years.