Now from time immemorial all children reared in Domremy were called the Children of the Tree; and they loved that name, for it carried with it a mystic privilege not granted to any other of the children of this world. Which was this: whenever one of these came to die, then beyond the vague and formless images drifting through his darkening mind rose soft and rich and fair a vision of the tree—if all was well with his soul. That was what some said. Others said the vision came in two ways: once as a warning, one or two years in advance of death, when the soul was the captive of sin, and then the tree appeared in its desolate winter aspect—then that soul was smitten with an awful fear. If repentance came, and purity of life the vision came again, this time summer-clad and beautiful; but if it were otherwise with that soul the vision was withheld, and it passed from life knowing its doom. Still others said that the vision came but once and then only to the sinless dying forlorn in distant lands and pitifully longing for some last dear reminder of their home. And what reminder of it could go to their hearts like the picture of the tree that was the darling of their love and the comrade of their joys and comforter of their small griefs all through the divine days of their vanished youth? Now the several traditions were as I have said, some believing one and some another. One of them I know to be the truth, and that was the last one. I do not say anything against the others; I think they were true, but I only _know_ that the last one was; and it is my thought that if one keep to the things he knows, and not trouble about the things which he cannot be sure about, he will have the steadier mind for it—and there is profit in that. I know that when the children of the tree die in a far land, then—if they be at peace with God—they turn their longing eyes toward home, and there, far-shining, as through a rift in a cloud that curtains heaven, they see the soft picture of the fairy tree, clothed in a dream of golden light; and they see the blooming meads sloping away to the river, and to their perishing nostrils is blown faint and sweet the fragrance of the flowers of home. And then the vision fades and passes—but _they_ know, _they_ know! and by their transfigured faces you know also, you stand looking on; yes, you know the message that has come, and that it has come from heaven. Joan and I believed alike about this matter. But Pierre Morel, and Jacques d’Arc and many others believed that the vision appeared twice—to a sinner. In fact, they and many others said they _knew_ it. Probably because their fathers had known it and had told them; for one gets most things at second hand in this world....