She drew a long sob, and struck her hand hard on the table; then, keeping her back ever towards me, she fled swiftly from the room.  I was amazed—­so light of heart as she commonly seemed, and of late disdainful—­to find her in this passion.  Yet it was to me that she had spoken—­to me that she had opened her heart.  Now I guessed that, if I was ever to win her, it must be through this Pucelle, on whom her mind was so strangely bent.  So I prayed that, if it might be God’s will, He would prosper the Maid, and let me be her loyal servitor, and at last bring me to my desire.

Something also I dreamed, as young men will who have read many romances, of myself made a knight for great feats of arms, and wearing in my salade my lady’s favour, and breaking a spear on Talbot, or Fastolf, or Glasdale, in some last great victory for France.

Then shone on my eyesight, as it were, the picture of these two children, for they were little more, Elliot and the Maid, kneeling together in the chapel of St. Martin, the gold hair and the black blended; and what were they two alone against this world and the prince of this world?  Alas, how much, and again how little, doth prayer avail us!  These thoughts were in my mind all day, while serving and answering customers, and carrying my master’s wares about the town, and up to the castle on the cliff, where the soldiers and sentries now knew me well enough, and the Scots archers treated me kindly.  But as for Elliot, she was like her first self again, and merrier than common with her father, to whom, as far as my knowledge went, she said not a word about the meeting in the crypt of St. Martin’s chapel, though to me she had spoken so freely.  This gave me some hope; but when I would have tried to ask her a question, she only gazed at me in a manner that abashed me, and turned off to toy with her jackanapes.  Whereby I went to my bed perplexed, and with a heavy heart, as one that was not yet conversant with the ways of women—­nay, nor ever, in my secular life, have I understood what they would be at.  Happier had it been for my temporal life if I had been wiser in woman’s ways.  But commonly, when we have learned a lesson, the lore comes too late.

Next day my master had business at the castle with a certain lord, and took me thither to help in carrying his wares.  This castle was a place that I loved well, it is so old, having first been builded when the Romans were lords of the land; and is so great and strong that our bishop’s castle of St. Andrews seems but a cottage compared to it.  From the hill-top there is a wide prospect over the tower and the valley of the Vienne, which I liked to gaze upon.  My master, then, went in by the drawbridge, high above the moat, which is so deep that, I trow, no foeman could fill it up and cross it to assail the walls.  My master, in limping up the hill, had wearied himself, but soon passed into the castle through the gateway of the bell-tower, as they call it, while I waited for him on the further end of the bridge, idly dropping morsels of bread to the swans that swam in the moat below.