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and here he spoke words such as I may not set down in writing, blaspheming God and the Maid.
She turned and looked at him, but as if she saw him not; and then, a light of joy and love transfiguring her face, she knelt down on the drawbridge, folding her hands, her face bowed, and so abode while one might count twenty, we that beheld her being amazed.

Then she rose and bent as if in salutation to one we saw not; next, addressing herself to the sentinel, she said, very gently-- "Sir, how canst thou take in vain the name of God, thou that art in this very hour to die ?" So speaking, she with her gentlemen went within the gate, while the soldier stood gazing after her like a man turned to stone.
The Maid passed from our sight, and then the sentinel, coming to himself, turned in great wrath on me, who stood hard by.
"What make you gaping here, you lousy wine-sack of Scotland ?" he cried; and at the word, my prayer which I had made to St.Andrew in my bonds came into my mind, namely, that I should not endure to hear my country defamed.
I stopped not to think of words, wherein I never had a ready wit, but his were still in his mouth when I had leaped within his guard, so that he might not swing out his long halberd.
"Blasphemer and liar!" I cried, gripping his neck with my left hand, while with two up-cuts of my right I sent his lies down his throat in company, as I deem, with certain of his teeth.
He dropped his halberd against the wooden fence of the bridge, and felt for his dagger.

I caught at his right hand with mine; cries were in my ears--St.Denis for France! St.Andrew for Scotland!--as the other men on guard came running forth to see the sport.
We gripped and swayed for a moment, then the staff of his fauchard coming between his legs, he tripped and fell, I above him; our weight soused against the low pales of the bridge side, that were crazy and old; there was a crash, and I felt myself in mid-air, failing to the moat far below us.