By this very device La Hire had seized Compiegne but six years agone, wherefore our hope was the higher.

About five of the clock on an April day we rode out of Compiegne, a great company,--too great, perchance, for that we had to do.

For our army was nigh a league in length as it went on the way, nor could we move swiftly, for there were waggons with us and carts, drawing guns and couleuvrines and powder, fascines wherewith to fill the fosses, and ladders and double ladders for scaling the walls.

So the captains ordered it to be, for ever since that day by Melun fosse, when the Saints foretold her captivity, the Maid submitted herself in all things to the captains, which was never her manner before.
As we rode slowly, she was now at the head of the line, now in the midst, now at the rear, wherever was need; and as I rode at her rein, I took heart to say-- "Madame, it is not thus that we have taken great keeps and holds, in my country, from our enemies of England." "Nay," said she, checking her horse to a walk, and smiling on me in the dusk with her kind eyes.

"Then tell me how you order it in your country." "Madame," I said, "it was with a little force, and lightly moving, that Messire Thomas Randolph scaled the Castle rock and took Edinburgh Castle out of the hands of the English, a keep so strong, and set on a cliff so perilous, that no man might deem to win it by sudden onfall.