It was this jolly customer who headed the squad that was leading the two prisoners to jail. At the sight of the warrior maid, he drew near her, contemplated her for a moment in rapt admiration, and reaching to her his heavy gloved hand said with considerable pride: "Brave Maid, here is a countryman of yours, born like yourself in Lorraine; and he is at your service, together with Riflard and Montargis, his two heavy cannons." Dunois leaned over towards Joan and said to her in a low voice: "This worthy fellow is Master John, the ablest and most daring cannonier in the place. He is, moreover, very expert in all things that concern the siege of a town." "I am happy to find here a countryman," said the Maid, smiling and cordially stretching out her gauntleted hand to the cannonier. "I shall to-morrow morning see how you manoeuvre Riflard and Montargis. We shall together examine the entrenchments of the enemy, you shall be my chief of artillery, and we shall drive the English away with shot of cannon--and the help of God!" "Countrywoman," cried Master John in a transport of delight, "my cannons shall need but to look at you, and they will go off of themselves, and their balls will fly straight at the English." The cannonier was saying these words when Joan heard a cry of pain, and from the back of her horse she saw one of the two English prisoners drop on his back, bleeding, with his scalp cut open by the blow of a pike that a mercenary had dealt upon his head, saying: "Look well at Joan the Maid. Look at her, you dog of an Englishman.[60] As sure as I have killed you, she will thrust your breed out of France!" At the sight of the flowing blood, that she had a horror of, the warrior maid grew pale; with a movement more rapid than thought, and pained at the soldier's brutality, she leaped from her horse, pressed her way to the Englishman, knelt down beside him, and raising the unhappy man's head, called with tears in her eyes to the surrounding militiamen: "Give him grace; the prisoner is unarmed--come to his help."[60a] At this compassionate appeal, several women, moved with pity, came to the wounded man, tore up their handkerchiefs and bound up his gash, while the warrior maid, still on her knees, held up the Englishman's head. The wounded man recovered consciousness for a moment, and at the sight of the young girl's handsome face, instinct with pity, he joined his two hands in adoration and wept. "Come, poor soldier; you need not fear. You shall not be hurt," said Joan to him, rising, and she put her foot into the stirrup that her little page Imerguet presented to her.