She rose from the grass and slowly went indoors. All that evening she moved about her home in a trance, feeling she had a great secret she could share with no one, yet one which she could never forget. A night or two later the village priest came for a chat with James of Arc. The two men talked of the war, and of the French and English kings. Joan sat by the window listening. Finally she heard her father say, "These be bad days; what with a weak king and the greedy English we French folk are like so many cattle waiting for the slaughter." "Jesu have pity on us!" said the priest. "There is a prophecy made long syne by some holy man that our France shall be ruined by a woman and then be safe restored by a maid from the borders of Lorraine. We know the woman, King Charles' mother, Madame Isabeau of Bavaria herself; but where is the maid? God grant she come soon!" There seemed to be silence in the room, but Joan heard a voice speaking to her. "Thou art the maid," said the voice. "Thou wast born to save this land of France." The summer passed and winter came to Lorraine. Outwardly Joan of Arc was like the other girls of Domremy. She helped her mother indoors and her father in the fields, she went to mass and confession and she learned as much as her friends did of the troubles of her country. But more and more often the voices spoke to her, when she was watching the cattle in the pasture, or visiting the little chapel on the hillside, or sewing in her room at home. They would come to her without warning, but always when she was alone, and they told her again and again that she was to save France, but they did not yet tell her how she was to do it. Sometimes she saw the visions of the saints themselves, but more often only heard their voices, and in time they grew so familiar to her that she no longer trembled at the sound. In the summer when Joan was sixteen the English and the soldiers of Burgundy swept down on Lorraine, and the people of Domremy, peasant folk who were always at the mercy of the troopers, left their homes and drove their cattle seven miles southward to the walled town of Neufchâteau. Joan, now a tall strong girl, pretty with her black hair and eyes and sunburned cheeks, went with her family and found a home in the walled city with a woman named La Rousse. Here, safe within the walls, she helped the other girls in tending the animals and caring for the housework. She heard wild tales of the terrible things the enemy's soldiers were doing in the country, and she prayed that her family and friends might not fall into their hands. Again Saint Michael appeared to her, and now he told her that the time was not far distant when she must set forth on her sacred mission.