“Hold up your hands.”

The man’s head was down.  He lifted it when he heard that soft friendly voice, and there was a wistful something in his face which made one think that there had been music in it for him and that he would like to hear it again.  When he raised his hands Joan laid her sword to his bonds, but the officer said with apprehension: 

“Ah, madam—­my General!”

“What is it?” she said.

“He is under sentence!”

“Yes, I know.  I am responsible for him”; and she cut the bonds.  They had lacerated his wrists, and they were bleeding.  “Ah, pitiful!” she said; “blood—­I do not like it”; and she shrank from the sight.  But only for a moment.  “Give me something, somebody, to bandage his wrists with.”

The officer said: 

“Ah, my General! it is not fitting.  Let me bring another to do it.”

“Another?  De par le Dieu!  You would seek far to find one that can do it better than I, for I learned it long ago among both men and beasts.  And I can tie better than those that did this; if I had tied him the ropes had not cut his flesh.”

The man looked on silent, while he was being bandaged, stealing a furtive glance at Joan’s face occasionally, such as an animal might that is receiving a kindness form an unexpected quarter and is gropingly trying to reconcile the act with its source.  All the staff had forgotten the huzzaing army drifting by in its rolling clouds of dust, to crane their necks and watch the bandaging as if it was the most interesting and absorbing novelty that ever was.  I have often seen people do like that—­get entirely lost in the simplest trifle, when it is something that is out of their line.  Now there in Poitiers, once, I saw two bishops and a dozen of those grave and famous scholars grouped together watching a man paint a sign on a shop; they didn’t breathe, they were as good as dead; and when it began to sprinkle they didn’t know it at first; then they noticed it, and each man hove a deep sigh, and glanced up with a surprised look as wondering to see the others there, and how he came to be there himself—­but that is the way with people, as I have said.  There is no way of accounting for people.  You have to take them as they are.

“There,” said Joan at last, pleased with her success; “another could have done it no better—­not as well, I think.  Tell me—­what is it you did?  Tell me all.”

The giant said: 

“It was this way, my angel.  My mother died, then my three little children, one after the other, all in two years.  It was the famine; others fared so—­it was God’s will.  I saw them die; I had that grace; and I buried them.  Then when my poor wife’s fate was come, I begged for leave to go to her—­she who was so dear to me—­she who was all I had; I begged on my knees.  But they would not let me.  Could I let her die, friendless and alone?  Could I let her die believing I would not come?  Would she let me die and she not come—­with her feet free to do it if she would, and no cost upon it but only her life?  Ah, she would come—­she would come through the fire!  So I went.  I saw her.  She died in my arms.  I buried her.  Then the army was gone.  I had trouble to overtake it, but my legs are long and there are many hours in a day; I overtook it last night.”