After a few moments he finished his bread and wine, paid his score, and followed them.  He watched them going down the village street toward the railway station.  Then he turned and walked slowly back to the spring in the dell.

The afternoon was hot, in spite of the steady breeze which came out of the north.  The air felt as if it had passed through a furnace.  The low, continuous thunder of the guns rolled up from Verdun, with now and then a sharper clap from St. Mihiel.

Pierre was very tired.  His head was heavy, his heart troubled.  He lay down among the ferns, looking idly at the foxglove spires above him and turning over in his mind the things he had heard and seen at Domremy.  Presently he fell into a profound sleep.

How long it was he could not tell, but suddenly he became aware of some one near him.  He sprang up.  A girl was standing beside the spring.

She wore a bright-red dress and her feet were bare.  Her black hair hung down her back.  Her eyes were the color of a topaz.  Her form was tall and straight.  She carried a distaff under her arm and looked as if she had just come from following the sheep.

“Good day, shepherdess,” said Pierre.  Then a strange thought struck him and he fell on his knees.  “Pardon, lady,” he stammered.  “Forgive my rudeness.  You are of the high society of heaven, a saint.  You are called Jeanne d’Arc?”

She nodded and smiled.  “That is my name,” said she.  “Sometimes they call me La Pucelle, or the Maid of France.  But you were right, I am a shepherdess, too.  I have kept my father’s sheep in the fields down there, and spun from the distaff while I watched them.  I knew how to sew and spin as well as any girl in the Barrois or Lorraine.  Will you not stand up and talk with me?”

Pierre rose, still abashed and confused.  He did not quite understand how to take this strange experience—­too simple for a heavenly apparition, too real for a common dream.

“Well, then,” said he, “if you are a shepherdess why are you here?  There are no sheep here.”

“But yes.  You are one of mine.  I have come here to seek you.”

“Do you know me, then?  How can I be one of yours?”

“Because you are a soldier of France and you are in trouble.”

Pierre’s head drooped.  “A broken soldier,” he muttered, “not fit to speak to you.  I am running away because I am afraid of fear.”

She threw back her head and laughed.  “You speak very bad French.  There is no such thing as being afraid of fear.  For if you are afraid of it, you hate it.  If you hate it, you will have nothing to do with it.  And if you have nothing to do with it, it cannot touch you; it is nothing.”

“But for you, a saint, it is easy to say that.  You had no fear when you fought.  You knew you would not be killed.”

“I was no more sure of that than the other soldiers.  Besides, when they bound me to the stake at Rouen and kindled the fire around me I knew very well that I should be killed.  But there was no fear in it.  Only peace.”