intelligent spirit. The stake had indeed come very near, the flames
already dazzled her eyes, she must have felt her slender form shrink
together at the thought. All that long night, through the early daylight
of the May morning did she lie and ponder, as for far less reasons
so many of us have pondered as we lay wakeful through those morning
watches. God's promises are great, but where is the fulfilment? We ask
for bread and he gives us, if not a stone, yet something which we cannot
realise to be bread till after many days. Jeanne's voices had never
paused in their pledge to her of succour. "Speak boldly, God will help
you--fear nothing"; there would be aid for her before three months,
and great victory. They went on saying so, though the stake was already
being raised. What did they mean? what did they mean? Could she still
trust them? or was it possible----?

Her heart was like to break. At their word she would have faced
the fire. She meant to do so now, notwithstanding the terrible, the
heartrending ache of hope that was still in her. But they did not give
her that heroic command. Still and always, they said God will help
you, our Lord will stand by you. What did that mean? It must mean
deliverance, deliverance! What else could it mean? If she held her head
high as she returned to the horrible monotony of that prison so often
left with hope, so often re-entered in sadness, it must soon have
dropped upon her tired bosom. Slowly the clouds had settled round her.
Over and over again had she affirmed them to be true--these voices that
had guided her steps and led her to victory. And they had promised her
the aid of God if she went forward boldly, and spoke and did not fear.
But now every way of salvation was closing; all around her were fierce
soldiers thirsting for her blood, smooth priests who admonished her in
charity, threatening her with eternal fire for the soul, temporal fire
for the body. She felt that fire, already blowing towards her as if on