will have all taken from you, Maitre Pierre, at rarely ventured, or only under the most humble no price, if you do not sell at any!" was the pith and clerical pretext. But his chief work and of many a weary jangle on this market-day at Vaucouleurs.

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office were among those of a neutral character, which he desired to convert to his own views of So general was the interest felt in the topics the great contest rending France. His exertions above alluded to, that there seemed scarcely any in that direction met with so much success, that devoted to a circumstance which was else certain at length an edict of the Regent pursued him on to have roused the most eager curiosity. Two or his travels, denouncing the severest penalties on three carts, on which were certain wooden edifi- any place, in or out of the English obedience, ces large enough to be inhabited by many persons, that should presume to give harborage to this after the fashion of tinkers and gipsies, and cov- pestilent friar," as he was succinctly described. ered with a species of coarse canvas, painted It was probably on this account that the cautious with the most extraordinary and horrible devices, governor of Vaucouleurs refused to permit Richard traversed the market-place, drawn by mules with himself to abide in the town, though he dared tinkling bells on their harness, and escorted by a not so far slight the recommendatory letters of train of young novices of some order of mendi- the Archbishop of Rheims as to refuse his troop cant friars, who chanted a Veni Creator in a re-permission to exhibit their usual performances; markably clear, melodious, and regulated harmo- or, very possibly, the religious manager, who was ny. Little attention followed their progress, and not remarkable for personal courage, and foreyet the important announcement had just been saw that an unpleasant altercation might arise on made at the market-cross that the excellent his account with the English at Commercy, chanters were the peerless actors of mysteries thought proper to seclude himself from admiration and moralities known in France by the title of while in their neighborhood. the Companions of Friar Richard of the Passion, unjustly expelled from Paris by the English tyrants. All true Frenchmen and lieges of the Cardinal-Duke of Bar were therefore earnestly exhorted to attend a representation of the Miracles of St. Denis, to be enacted at noonday in the church of St. Savior, at the rate of one-fifth of a sol parisis for every pair of eyes and an indefinite share in the benefits of an indulgence granted by the Most Revered Lord Archbishop and Duke of Rheims to all the faithful attending the exhibition.

Since so exciting an announcement as the possibility of beholding a headless saint, after undergoing all the troubles of his mortal career, perform high mass to obtain the pity of Heaven on the famished city of Orleans, stirred very little notice, it may be thought that much less was taken of an event that was nevertheless of infinitely more importance. A side postern in the town house of Vaucouleurs suddenly opened, and two persons were thrust out of it with considerable rudeness, and even a degree of violence, as if dismissed by some offended or outraged authority. But in fact the circumstance was too usual on a day of justice, as the sessions of the royal governors were styled with great unintentional irony, to be thought worthy even of a passing thought. And moreover the expelled parties turned their backs so abruptly on the bustling groups in the marketplace, and passed through the archway into the open country beyond the gates so rapidly, that there was scarcely time for any of the quidnunes of the town to speculate on their apparition.

Already, in its rudest infancy, the influence of the art of scenic representation over the multitude, in a political point of view, was observed, and put to use by professors of statecraft. Friar Richard and his companions had been driven out of Paris, on a charge of having exerted the talent they possessed in the exhibition of the religious plays, which had lately become a favorite amusement of the people, to excite hatred and resistance to the English domination. Friar Richard was almost the first of his order, which reïnvented the dramatic art, who had a real genius, at least for stage-effect, and he acquired for himself and the young friars he had trained to the office, an extraordinary popularity; but the zeal of his partisanship to the cause of Charles VII. soon betrayed him into dangerous excesses, in the way of vituperation and prophesies against the English mas- "Mother! since you brought me forth to breathe ters of Paris. His allegories became too thinly So short a life, Olympius had good right to bequeath vailed to escape even a military observation, that My short life, honor: yet that right he doth in no regarded with a strange mixture of contempt and reverence such merely mental but religious exercitations.

degree."

CHAPTER II.

THE MEUSE.

CHAPMAN'S HOMER.

To the practiced eye, a village was visible among the remote windings of the Meuse, toward which the two persons quitting Vaucouleurs evidently took their way. A stranger's glance would scarcely have rested until it reached the towers of the Castle of Commercy, and the vast verdant expanse of its surrounding forest.

Expelled from the capital, but animated to fiercer exertions against those who had become his personal oppressors, Friar Richard formed what was possibly the first strolling company of players on record. Attended by those younger and more zealous disciples who adhered to him In excuse, however, for the slight attention after his expulsion, and with such properties as bestowed on them by the few persons they passthey were enabled to rescue from sequestration, ed, as well as those they left behind, it must be Friar Richard of the Passion rambled into every allowed that there was little in the appearance of town, castle and village of France with his reli- either stranger to excite the notice of common gious shows, and wherever he might, without in- observers forming, in all ages the infinite majority curring too much danger, repeated his Parisian of mankind. One was a middle-aged man, appaoffenses. The countries that favored the cause rently belonging to the lower order of burgesses; of Charles VII. made him enthusiastically wel- the other, a young peasant girl of the province, as come; into those of a contrary disposition he was abundantly certified by the style of their

costume. A passer-by of more intelligence or somewhat superfluous vehemence, if meant only curiosity, would at least have paused to take a as a prop to aid her steps. second survey of the female.

Her companion was a very different personage.

doublet, a long cloak and hood of some still coarser stuff resembling baize, a steel belt, in which was stuck a large unsheathed knife, and on his shoulder he carried a long weapon, which was a sort of cross between an axe, a pike, and a saw, called a gisarme. On this ancient life-preserver, its owner brought dangling along a wallet and a leather bottle, both, by their shrunken skins, empty, but which had probably contained the day's provisions.

She was a young woman, seemingly about As we have said, he was a middle-aged man, of twenty years of age, tall, though not of extraor-active, compact figure, with a keen, sly and somedinary stature, but so symmetrically and power- what sarcastic visage, habited after the fashion of fully molded that her figure produced the effect the lower classes of townspeople, in a fustian of one much loftier; and, in unison with the strength and beauty of its muscular conformation, her full expanded bosom, the freedom and rapidity of her step, gave her port something of the majesty and limber grace of the mountain deer. Her complexion was much embrowned by the sun, to which her peasant toils had probably exposed her from childhood, but was, perhaps, naturally fair, or at least pale in its hues, though tinged at the moment of our description with a deep, rich glow of indignation or shame, or of both mingled, like The young peasant preceded her companion by the crimson reflection of sunset in the waters of a several steps, and indeed, in the troubled absorp mountain lake. Her countenance might have been tion of her thoughts, seemed almost to have forcalled beautiful by one to whom absolute regulari- gotten his presence. On his part he followed, ty of features and feminine softness of expression keeping her in eye with a singular and vague were not essential components in the idea. To expression of doubt and ridicule, not unmingled others her noble but somewhat sternly carved with something of the wonder and curiosity a lineaments, the cloud that rested on her brows creature of unknown species might raise even in like the sublime sorrow on those of a statue of a mind but little devoted to contemplation. And Nemesis, the touch of fire in the depth of her so they continued until they had left the gates of dark eyes, the passion and fierceness which occa- Vaucouleurs at a considerable distance behind. sionally gleamed on her lips and nostrils as she But thought and silence were both too alien to the pursued the troubled tenor of her meditations, nature and habits of Durand Laxart, mine host would have been rather terrors than allurements. of our Lady's Lily, in Neuchâteau, to be preserved There was something tempestuous and fearful longer than certain personal reasons made him even in the beauty and glossy profusion of the deem advisable; which was, till he concluded they yew-black hair which escaped from her scarlet had gone sufficiently far and fast to satisfy the snood and tossed disorderly in the wind about officers of the Captain of Vaucouleurs that they her, giving though it might a sibylline grandeur had no idea of slighting the commands wherewith and gloom to her aspect And yet an indefinable they were driven from his presence. impression was produced in the beholder's mind St. Julian keep us from such fellow-travelers that this troubled inspiration was not habitual to as thou art, Jeannette!" he then exclaimed. "Not the countenance he surveyed; that its characteris- a word hast thou given me, good or bad, since we tic expression was one of profound thoughtful- left the town. All the martys on their knees, ness, or of that vague and dreamy repose which with myself, as the husband of my wife, permitted so often conceals the depth and power of the [to kneel among them could not have obtained so passions in mighty spirits, stirred only by mighty much of any other woman; and thou leggest it on impulses. as if there were something pleasant at our jour

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The first words of this address, which concluded so relishingly, startled the young girl from her troubled revery. She paused, glanced round, and tossing her wild locks from her visage in the streaming wind, like the branches of a willow, continued her way at a slower pace.

The dress of this marvelous peasant girl pre-ney's end. For my part, I wonder what it can sented no special claims on attention. It was one be, unless thy friends, the fairies, are cooking us generally worn by young females of her class in something savory for a welcome, such as hogs the eastern provinces of France; consisting of a fritters and onions, with a cup of black Montagne short petticoat of the coarsest blue fustian, adorned to wash the grease down." with a rosary of black berries hanging from a red leather girdle. Her feet were protected, without being covered on the upper part, by a pair of wooden sandals secured with iron latchets at the ankles; and her upper clothing was a kind of jacket formed from the fur of some forest animal, fastened with leaden tags, and ornamented with a singular reliquary, being a small gold coin set in a heart-shaped Agnus Dei, of the duller metal, such as were manufactured in convents for the use of the pious poor, who esteemed and preserved them as precious amulets against danger and sickness. The one in question was profusely trimmed with scrolls of Latin prayers and sentences from the psalms, in consecrated wax, and was prettily glazed with colored glass to shield the contents from contact. A woolen mantle and hood of different hues, completed the "It is true. Why, so let it be !" said the girl young girl's attire. She carried a sort of piked vehemently, but adding, after a moment of staff, used by the shepherds of the country in thought, in a softer and sadder tone, But yet, guarding their flocks against the numerous and Durand, I shall not be altogether unwelcomed herce wolves of the neighboring mountains, which home again. The mountains, the skies, the forshe occasionally smote on the ground with a lests, the streams, have not forgotten me! Even

"The fairies?-But, ah, indeed, I must look to them for my welcome, or to none !" she replied, in a deep, mournful, passionately-toned voice. "Yet deem you, uncle Durand, that no one else in all Domremy will gladden to behold us? Of father, mother, brothers and sister,-none? They will not have me always with them."

"What welcome can we expect-leaving in disgrace and returning in worse, against the will of your poor father, my respected brother-in-law and all your family?" returned uncle Durand.

this farewell glory in the west glows kindly in thou not offer to do what valiant nobles and chemine eyes, as in the old time when I was wont valiers start from their sleep if they but dream of to gaze it into darkness, marveling what might attempting? When the brave Bastard himself be the land of its rest! This very air is like the no longer hopes to keep his father's city, and the breath of one that loves me: I panted for it as if Breton Constable skulks like a wounded wolf in smothering for the want amid the narrow roofs a hole, wilt thou save Orleans, and keep the field of Neuchateau! And since I am despised and for France? Wert thou Roland himself, and rejected, since my words are raving and madness, hadst his horn at thy mouth, as thou hast only let them give me the care of the flocks again, and thy fierce woman's railing, it were a haught enmy silence among the hills, with only the blue terprise, to affright the English vultures from skies by day, and the stars by night, for company. their prey I am never alone then; in cities only have 1 learned what loneliness is !"

יי!

"Not by mine own arm-not by human might do I purpose to save my King and France!" "Indeed?" inquired Durand, with a suspicious replied the girl. "The spirits that appeared to glance at his niece. "Have you no fear of the me were the glorified saints in heaven; the voices wolves, that talk you so?-though I have heard that murmur forever around me and exhort mé you never had even a lamb worried. Well, wise forth on my work of redemption, come to mine people may follow their own opinions; but had ears mingled with the remote, sea-like harmony you been my daughter-Heaven be praised I have of the celestial harps! And yet, indeed," she none!-I would not have tempted Providence, or continued, in a musing and self-struck tone, a rather the foul fiend, by leaving a brave young marvel and a wonder to all time it were, that a lass in the fields by night, staring at the moon! woman should save a royal knight,—a peasant The Enemy (Jesu preserve us!) is a great ram- redeem a king and a mighty realm! Yet women bler, and knows a buxom wench when he sees and shepherds have ever been chosen to work her as well as any Christian of us all! Why dost the marvels of God! Was it not David, the thou flash thine eyes so fiercely on me, Jeanne? shepherd, that slew the giant, and preserved the I am in a state of grace and confession-I fear fear-stricken people when least hope was? Our thee not! I mean, child, thou shouldst not look so disrespectfully at thine uncle, who has always been too good to thee, and who bought thee those beads at thy girdle, of which perchance thou dost not make so constant a use as were for thy soul's great weal!"

"Let us pray for Orleans then, and that our blessed Mother may take pity on France, and on our fair young Dauphin, whom the she-wolf that gave him milk persecutes to the death! whom all the world deserts!" said the peasant girl, raising her beads, and murmuring an Ave-Maria in a low but vehement undertone.

"Thou patterest it like another Christian,- -as well as Dom Joffrid himself, but not so fast," said Durand, after listening with outstretched ears unto the conclusion, and giving a smack of approval, as if he had tasted some good wine,

Our Lady keep thee ever in the mind to do so, for I well remember the sorcerer that was tried at Toul, could not say the Ave-Maria for his life! But art thou not cured of Orleans yet, after what my Lord de Baudricourt was pleased to say to me, Take thy lunatic home to her parents, and bring her to her senses with a whip and a dark room! dost thou think I am skilled in the leechcraft of diseased wits? said the noble knight most courteously to me, whom he perceived to be a discreet and trustworthy person. He might have spared his threats about the short shrive and the long rope, for I felt far more inclined never to return on such an errand than he could be not to see me on it. And home I am taking thee, sure enough, if it may be; but truly do they say, A rotten bunch and a musty pannier,' for if thou hadst not made me as mad as thyself, what could have induced me to lead thee, or rather to be led by thee, before so grave and potent a lord, to sing him such a song about buttercups as thine?" "I am not mad,-they are mad that will not listen to me! What said I that is madness?" returned the young girl.

"Didst thou not beseech the knight to his gray beard, to send thee into France, to raise the siege of Orleans?" said Durand, laughing outright. "Art thou not a peasant and a woman, and didst

Blessed mother, was she not herself a woman? and who knows not how she loves France so well that she has strewn her own lilies on its lovely banner? Hideous lions and leopards yawn for ravage on England's! And being but a woman, tell me, Durand, what Frenchman would dare to fly before his foe when a woman preferred death to shame so base?"

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"In very sooth, the bob of a winesop at my lips is the worst blow I did ever willingly take," said Durand, with a smile, “ yet methinks, Jeanne, thou dost stir a sort of fierceness in me, as if I could cut a throat myself if I could get fairly behind a man! And once, methought, when thou wert raving to Sir Robert de Baudricourt himself, he looked like a man that knew not what to think or say, and lifted his eyebrows and stared at thee like an owl at the moon, and played with his dagger-belt as puzzled as I have been with a reckoning when I doubted whether to ask mine own of some free companion or not. But, come, 'tis just as well as it is, for thou wottest well, thy father says the apparitions thou hast seen are neither more nor less than delusions and temptations of the Foul One; and thyself ownest they chiefly presented themselves to thee beneath the Fairy Tree or beside the Haunted Fountain in the forest."

"Because it was chiefly in those spots that I prayed or wept over the woful news that come to us on every wind," replied Jeanne; but a shadow rapidly stole over the enthusiastic light in her countenance, and she relapsed into revery.

"But cheer up, Jeannette," said uncle Durand,

uneasily interrupting this pause. "After all, Í cannot but love thee, and since thou canst not refuse to take so great a lord's word for it, that all thy fine talk is lunatic raving,-if thou wilt promise to think no more of kings and knights, and wrongs and rights, and other matters beyond the understanding of poor folk-if thou wilt promise to look out for some jolly young sweetheart like any other lish wench, and not frighten the men with fierce looks and short answers, as has been thy wont hitherto,-I will not tell thy father I am bringing thee home because my wife was

certain it was thy purpose to run away and serve under a banner, after the fashion of young damsels in general that go to the wars."

I pray thee, uncle, do not dare to tell my father this!" said Jeanne, halting, and turning with such vivacity that her kinsman started back a step or two.

But wilt thou promise-wilt thou promise, Jeannette?" he said, endeavoring to conceal his alarm.

He found himself standing beneath a pile of rocks, which formed part of what had once been a broad inland sweep of the Meuse, whence an ancient castle, whose ruins still occupied the center, belonging of old to the lords of Domremy, was still called the Island. But it was now deserted by the river, and offered to the gaze a wide undulating valley of flowery verdure, bounded on the left by the silver windings of the river, on the right by the distant mountains of the Vosges, and "What shall I promise thee, Durand?That, in front by the forest and towers of Commercy. if He who hung yon eternal globe of fire in the From these rocks, in plenteous gushes through, skies-He who draws the darkness over it by the lofty clefts in the massive granite, flowed night, to give all things rest,-bids me depart, I many long, willowy streams of water, which will tarry at thy command?" said Jeanne, with a descending into a basin, formed by its Own withering scorn that almost instantly melted away ceaseless action below, composed a fountain that in a shower of tears, as she continued, "But dost supplied the village with a sweet and bright thou think I can inflict any grief upon mine aged beverage, but which, nevertheless, enjoyed no sire I shall not suffer a thousandfold?-And very good renown. Whether it was owing to Baudricourt himself had heard the prophecy, that its solitary situation, and to the ancient northern a wife should ruin the realm of France, and a superstitions attached to wells, or to the neighvirgin restore it! What hath Isabeau de Bavière borhood of a vast beech-tree of still worse charleft undone to destroy her royal son and this acter, it is not easy at this distant period to verealm? For the rest, strive thou with the weak-rify; but the tree and fountain together occupied est wind of Heaven, ere thou talkest of resisting a district within whose haunted pale no peasant at all acquainted with the associated legends ever willingly ventured, save in the broad daylight, and then with vague mislikings and alarm.

Heaven's behest !"

"Well, in good faith, if living in the clouds can keep a woman so, I do believe thou art of the rare kind the prophecy needs," said Durand; but the disdain and haste with which the peasant girl turned away, and resumed her progress, checked the further flow of his jesting humor.

Uncle Durand was piqued, and kept silence for awhile. At last, weary of ruminating on the peculiarities of his ill-assorted fellow-traveler, which he contented himself with ascribing to a degree of insanity, and willing to show himself not so overawed as he was in reality,-Durand began first to hum and then to sing aloud. The sweetness of his own voice pleased him so well, that it was not until he had sung the last verse of an almost endless drinking chanson, that he noticed he had unconsciously left the road to Domremy, following the steps of his niece. They had entered under the shadow of an ancient forest that skirted the way, and was known by the name of the Bois Chesnu, or Hoary Wood.

affrighted wanderers who had chanced to come upon them in their midnight orgies.

The Fairy Tree of Domremy, so well known from its connection with the fortunes of the Maid of Orleans, was a beech tree of such magnificence and antiquity, that the superstitions concerning it might perhaps be traditions of the Druidic ages of Gaul. It was said to be haunted by a malignant kind of spirits, whom the fear, rather than the civility, of the country people designated as the Dark or Fatal Ladies. L'arbre charmine faée was its title far and near;, but the qualities and offices assigned to the fairies of Domremy were rather those of witches and sorceresses than of the cheerful little sprites known in England by the name. Their chief business and delight were said to consist in luring mankind under the dreadful dominion to which they were themselves subjected; and they were supposed to achieve this object by the most splendid temptations, including that of their own This sylvan solitude was by no means a favor-personal beauty, described as unrivaled by those ite one with Durand Laxart, nor indeed with most other persons acquainted with the locality. The extreme age of the trees, the strangely twist- This legend was possibly a reminiscence of ed forms of their trunks and intermingled branch- the ancient woodland mythology concerning the es, the gray, spectral slime of the moss with nymphs that dwelt in trees; or, more probably, which they were nearly all clothed, made it the of the Druidic ceremonials, and of the arts and fitting scene of many a dismal superstition. The allurements practiced by the Celtic priestesses to terror inspired by woods is probably a relic of the lure back Christian converts to paganism. times of paganism, among nations whose ances-it is certain that the lords of Domremy annually tors sacrificed to dreadful divinities within such celebrated rites resembling those with which of verdant temples; or of the fears and abhorrence old the sylvan divinities were propitiated, around infused by the first Christian missionaries into the tree and fountain. It was usual with them their converts, of the places of the unholy worship and the whole district of their vassalage to assemrelinquished. Durand endeavored to persuade ble on the first day of May on the enchanted himself that his companion, whose familiarity spot, to spend it in feasts, dancing, singing, and with the district he well knew, was leading him other rejoicings, beneath the broad shadow of the to the village by some short path. But though beech tree, which usually at that season formed he followed without remonstrance, it was with no a dome of snowy blossom and verdure. When great satisfaction, along a green, winding swine- this was not the case, it boded ill luck to the track, almost lost in withered leaves and under- whole neighborhood during the year. The founwood, and in the glimmering crimson of the sun-tain was propitiated by a present of little loaves, set among the innumerable branches overhead, carefully baked for the occasion, of the finest until they suddenly emerged upon a spot which wheat, which, after being well soaked, were diof all others was least desired or expected by vided among the company in honor of the wamine host of the Lily of Neuchâteau. ters. It was believed that the founder of the

But

Domremy family, extinct at the period of our exile and wandering, returned to finish his cachronicle, had made a compact with the Fatal reer, it was believed, in penance and prayer, amid Ladies, which obliged them to observe this cere- the scenes where his deepest villanies had been monial under pain of forfeiture of their possessions. perpetrated. Durand remembered, that in favor Accordingly the first who failed in it was the of his niece only did this terrible ascetic relax the last of his line; and nearly thirty years had severity of the solitude and silence, to which he elapsed since the last Lord of Domremy finished had apparently condemned himself. He took dea life of rebellion, sacrilege, and crime of various light in relating to the child tales of warfare and sorts, in compelled banishment from his native battle in distant and strange lands of the East, land. The peasantry nevertheless preserved in where it seemed he had spent many years in ruder guise the custom of their fathers, and thus combating the infidels,-probably pleased with perpetuated the renown of the Fairy Tree and the eager innocence of the attention she lent. Fountain of Domremy. Perhaps he was a little mad; for what else could have made a worn-out fanatic soldier of the sepulchre take delight in teaching a female child the ordonnance of battles, the names and uses of warlike engines, the subtle stratagems of the bloody strifes in which he had spent nearly twice the average life of man?

But it was not on account of these dreary legends only that Durand Laxart was filled with dismay, when he found whither they had strayed. There it was that his niece first beheld the apparitions whose voices urged her forth on the marvelous enterprise she announced; whom she herself indeed declared to be saints of paradise, With these ideas in his mind, uncle Durand but who, considering the locality, might reason- was disagreeably startled when raising his eyes ably be dreaded as denizens of another realm. to the chapel, he saw, or thought he saw, a dark Nor was the feeling much diminished when Du- figure, resembling that of the departed eremite, rand remarked the expression of profound and bending over a rock, and gazing most attentively troubled thought in the countenance of his erratic down upon them from a cowl drawn over its kinswoman, as she paused and gazed around. It visage. It vanished instantaneously, like a shawas now the hour of sunset, and in his apprehen- dow glancing away from light; but the appa sion there was something fiendish and unearthly rition, real or imagined, produced so unpleasant in the red glow that overspread the landscape, an effect upon Durand, that he turned to entreat the windings of the river, and the rocks, giving his niece to proceed on their journey. To his to the fantastic roots clinging over them, the as- surprise he perceived that she was kneeling, and pect of twining serpents of fire. with clasped hands seemed absorbed in prayer, "What do we here, child? It will be dark-while tears streamed unheeded down her cheeks. night presently, and this is no place to meet it in," said Durand, tremulously.

Durand gazed tremulously round, not daring to interrupt this act of devotion, but with some inMy heart is something chilled by yonder ward doubt as to what description of power it gray-bearded man's despisal of my words. I might be addressed. His kinswoman might have would behold again the very spot where I heard read the dark pages of her destiny in his troubled the sweet voices, and saw the radiant forms, that and dubious face, had she not been too thoroughly I may believe again!" replied Jeanne, and look-absorbed in the solemn and mournful thoughts ing thoughtfully upward among the lofty wide- that crowded upon her and filled her soul, while spreading branches, clothed with the earliest engaged in a silently-passionate appeal to Heaven green of spring, she added, "The blossoms are plentiful this year; when they spread, the tree will seem one mound of lilies! and by that time the lilies of France must bloom again, or

fade forever!"

for guidance. But Durand was, suddenly startled out of his devotional propriety. What sounds are these? Let us begone" he exclaimed"Let us begone, Jeanne--there is nothing good to be worshiped here-it is no hallowed place; and, hark! what sounds are these ?"

"Be not tempted by fair promises, my child; the Dark Ladies keep them only for show's sake, This exclamation was occasioned by remote awhile! that I should speak such a word sounds resembling the blasts of horns and the here!" said Durand, crossing himself with visi-halloos of a chase, echoed with ghostly faintness ble terror.

among the surrounding hills; at least, they might have struck Durand in that light at any other time and place, especially if the cries of the distant hunters had been in a language which he understood. But such they were not, and he gazed in mute terror at his kinswoman, almost expecting that the Prince of Darkness, with his terrific retinue, was about to rush around and sweep himself and her bodily away.

"Our Lady will protect thee; look, yonder is her chapel and hermitage,-fear nothing!" said Jeanne, pointing on high to a little building, to which was attached a cell, hewn in the rock, known far and near as the hermitage of St. Mary of Domremy. Durand was somewhat comforted by observing its white cross, and the image of the Virgin peering from among the alders and brambles that clustered up the steep. But a new alarm suddenly occurred to him. It was true that this hermitage was venerated throughout the country for the sanctity of the solitaries "Ay, but of what manner of hunters?" said who, from time to time, and for ages, had ten- Durand, with chattering teeth. "Thou knowest anted it. But its last possessor was a strange this tree is haunted by fairies and demons. Give and half-savage ascetic, who left at his demise no me thine hand; let us struggle with the fiend, very favorable impressions among the inhabitants and away, if God gives us grace ever to see Domof the neighboring districts. It was even as-remy again.”

"What ails thee, uncle? These are sounds of an approaching chase," said Jeanne, rising slowly and calmly.

serted by some old folks, in whispers, that he was "It is false! this tree is haunted only by the identical with that very Lord of Domremy, whose saints, and white-robed companies of holiest inarmanifold crimes brought down so heavy a ven- tyrs," returned Jeanne, vehemently. "It was on geance on his head, and who, after forty years of this very sward, beneath these very branches,