The boy, perfectly respectful, not forgetting for a second his affair of keeping the canoe away from the fish-hole, looked at me squarely, and his uncommon light eyes gleamed out of his face like the eyes of a prophet.  “M’sieur, it is a tale doubtless which seems strange to you, but to us others it is not strange.  M’sieur lives in New York, and there are automobiles and trolley-cars and large buildings en masse, and to M’sieur the world is made of such things.  But there are other things.  We who live in quiet places, know.  One has not too much of excitement, we others, so that one remembers a great event which has happened to one’s family many years.  Yes, indeed, M’sieur, centuries.  If one has not much one guards as a souvenir the tale of the silver stirrup of Jeanne.  Yes, for several generations.”

The boy was apparently unconscious that his remarks were peculiar.  “Philippe, will you tell me what you mean by a silver stirrup which Jeanne d’Arc gave to your ancestors?”

“But with pleasure, M’sieur,” he answered readily, with the gracious French politeness which one meets among the habitants side by side with sad lapses of etiquette.  “It is all-simple that the old grandfather, the ancient, he who lived in France when the Maid fought her wars, was an armorer. ’Ca fait que’—­sa fak, Philippe pronounced it—­’so it happened that on a day the stirrup of the Maid broke as her horse plunged, and my grandfather, the ancient, he ran quickly and caught the horse’s head.  And so it happened—­ce fait que—­that my grandfather was working at that moment on a fine stirrup of gold for her harness, for though they burned her afterwards, they gave her then all that there was of magnificence.  And the old follow—­le vieux—­whipped out the golden stirrup from his pocket, quite prepared for use, so it happened—­and he put it quickly in the place of the silver one which she had been using.  And Jeanne smiled.  ’You are ready to serve France, Armorer.’

“She bent then and looked le vieux in the face—­but he was young at the time.

“‘Are you not Baptiste’s son, of Doremy?’ asked the Maid.

“‘Yes, Jeanne,’ said my grandpere.

“’Then keep the silver stirrup to remember our village, and God’s servant Jeanne,’ she said, and gave it to him with her hand.”

If a square of Gobelin tapestry had emerged from the woods and hung itself across the gunwale of my canvas canoe it would not have been more surprising.  I got my breath.  “And the stirrup, what became of it?”

The boy shrugged his shoulders. “Sais pas,” he answered with French nonchalance.  “One does not know that.  It is a long time, M’sieur le Docteur.  It was lost, that stirrup, some years ago.  It may be a hundred years.  It may be two hundred.  My grandfather, he who keeps the grocery shop, has told me that there is a saying that a Martel must go to France to find the silver stirrup.  In every case I do not know.  It is my wish to fight for France, but as for the stirrup or Jeanne—­sais pas.”  Another shrug.  With that he was making oration, his light eyes flashing, his dark face working with feeling, about the bitterness of being a cripple, and unable to go into the army.