As the Maid of Orleans neared the audience, she was greeted by applause, which pleased her even less than it pleased a certain little group in the center of the gathering. She rode on toward the end of the meadow, where next the woods stood the disguised Dauphin and his courtiers. As she reached the first of the Dauphin’s men-at-arms, she halted her steed, swung her armor-clad body lightly to the ground, and advanced with intent gaze toward him, whom she knew to be Charles, the future king. [Illustration: “She sat her horse like a knight of old.”] Meanwhile, Napoleon, weary of this pomp and pageantry, and feeling his back free at last from knights and emperors, moved slowly to a near-by birch tree, and began to nibble at its fresh new leaves. Joan’s retainers had followed her, and as there was no one to forbid him to take refreshment, he ate on undisturbed. Suddenly at his very nose sounded a blare of trumpets. They proclaimed the Domremy peasant girl to be what she had declared herself—the deliverer of her country. But Napoleon knew nothing of proclamations or deliverers. All he knew was that he had been rudely disturbed and needlessly startled—he, who had uncomplainingly worn trappings of every description and borne Augustus and Roland, the Black Prince and Joan! The trumpets sounded again in his ears. This time he answered with a terrifying snort, kicked up his heels and started down the meadow, his tasseled blanket, for with this new Joan he wore no saddle, dragging on the ground. Joan, in the act of receiving the homage of the Dauphin and his court, saw him go. She sprang to her feet, mediaeval manners forgotten, threw aside her spear and shield, and started in pursuit. She forgot that she was to save France; but she knew she was to save the Earl of Leicester embarrassment from having no steed to ride, when he should advance in the next act to greet Queen Elizabeth. The progress of Napoleon was somewhat lessened by his robes in which he became often entangled, and by his desire for more fresh birch leaves. Within five minutes Joan was near him, her helmet long since gone, her armor more or less depleted, her hair streaming in the wind. She was no longer the gentle maid of Domremy; she was a Wyoming girl who was catching her horse. “Oh, John!” cried Grandmother Webster, who with frightened eyes watched her granddaughter in this somewhat strange proceeding. “Oh, John, how can you laugh! She’ll be hurt!” “No, she won’t, mother,” her father answered. “She’s used to that sort of thing. Don’t worry.” “She’s the pluckiest girl I ever saw in my life!” cried the Colonel, slapping his knee. “Joan of Arc wasn’t in it!” And his grandson, who had risen to his feet and was cheering as though he were at a foot-ball game, kept shouting between his cheers: “Say, but she’s a corker!”