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“Don’t you think we had better go into Peel, and get some bannocks to eat on the way, Randal?” said Jean.
But Randal said he was not hungry; and, besides, the people at Peel would tell the Fairnilee people where they had gone.
“We’llwishfor things to eat when we get to the Wishing Well,” said Randal. “All sorts of good things—cold venison pasty, and everything you like.”
So they began climbing the hill, and they followed the Peel burn. It ran in and out, winding this way and that, and when they did get to the top of the hill, Jean was very tired and very hungry. And she was very disappointed. For she expected to see some wonderful new country at her feet, and there was only a low strip of sunburnt grass and heather, and then another hill-top! So Jean sat down, and the hot sun blazed on her, and the flies buzzed about her and tormented her.
“Come on, Jean,” said Randal; “it must be over the next hill!”
So poor Jean got up and followed him, but he walked far too fast for her. When she reached the crest of the next hill, she found a great cairn, or pile of grey stones; and beneath her lay, far, far below, a deep valley covered with woods, and a stream running through it that she had never seen before.
That stream was the Yarrow.
Randal was nowhere in sight, and she did not know where to look for the Wishing Well. If she had walked straight forward through the trees she would have come to it; but she was so tired, and so hungry, and so hot, that she sat down at the foot of the cairn and cried as if her heart would break.
Then she fell asleep.
When Jean woke, it was as dark as it ever is on a midsummer night in Scotland.
It was a soft, cloudy night; not a clear night with a silver sky.
Jeanie heard a loud roaring close to her, and the red light of a great fire was in her sleepy eyes.
In the firelight she saw strange black beasts, with horns, plunging and leaping and bellowing, and dark figures rushing about the flames. It was the beasts that made the roaring. They were bounding about close to the fire, and sometimes in it, and were all mixed in the smoke.
Jeanie was dreadfully frightened, too frightened to scream.
Presently she heard the voices of men shouting on the hill below her. The shouts and the barking of dogs came nearer and nearer.
Then a dog ran up to her, and licked her face, and jumped about her.
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It was her own sheepdog,Yarrow.
He ran back to the men who were following him, and came again with one of them.
It was old Simon Grieve, very tired, and so much out of breath that he could scarcely speak.
Jean was very glad to see him, and not frightened any longer.
“Oh, Jeanie, my doo’,” said Simon, “where hae ye been? A muckle gliff ye hae gien us, and a weary spiel up the weary braes.”
Jean told him all about it: how she had come with Randal to see the Wishing Well, and how she had lost him, and fallen asleep.
“And sic a nicht for you bairns to wander on the hill,” said Simon. “It’s the nicht o’ St. John, when the guid folk hae power. And there’s a’ the lads burning the Bel fires, and driving the nowt* through them: nae less will serve them. Sic a nicht!”
* Nowt, cattle.
This was the cause of the fire Jean saw, and of the noise of the cattle. On midsummer’s night the country people used to light these fires, and drive the cattle through them. It was an old, old custom come down from heathen times.
Now the other men from Fairnilee had gathered round Jean. Lady Ker had sent them out to look for Randal and her on the hills. They had heard from the good wife at Peel that the children had gone up the burn, andYarrowhad tracked them till Jean was found.
Chapter Seven
JEAN was found, but where was Randal? She told the men who had come out to look for her, that Randal had gone on to look for the Wishing Well. So they rolled her up in a big shepherd’s plaid, and two of them carried Jean home in the plaid, while all the rest, with lighted torches in their hands, went to look for Randal through the wood.
Jean was so tired that she fell asleep again in her plaid before they reached Fairnilee. She was wakened by the men shouting as they drew near the house, to show that they were coming home. Lady Ker was waiting at the gate, and the old nurse ran down the grassy path to meet them.
“Where’s my bairn?” she cried as soon as she was within call.
The men said, “Here ‘s Mistress Jean, and Randal will be here soon; they have gone to look for him.”
“Where are they looking?” cried nurse.
“Just about the Wishing Well.”
The nurse gave a scream, and hobbled back to Lady Ker.
“Ma bairn’s tint!”* she cried, “ma bairn’s tint! They ‘ll find him never. The good folk have stolen him away from that weary Wishing Well!”
* Tint, lost.
“Hush, nurse,” said Lady Ker, “do not frighten Jean.”
She spoke to the men, who had no doubt that Randal would soon be found and brought home.
So Jean was put to bed, where she forgot all her troubles; and Lady Ker waited, waited, all night, till the grey light began to come in, about two in the morning.
Lady Ker kept very still and quiet, telling her beads, and praying. But the old nurse would never be still, but was always wandering out, down to the river’s edge, listening for the shouts of the shepherds coming home. Then she would come back again, and moan and wring her hands, crying for “her bairn.”
About six o’clock, when it was broad daylight and all the birds were singing, the men returned from the hill.
But Randal did not come with them.
Then the old nurse set up a great cry, as the country people do over the bed of someone who has just died.
Lady Ker sent her away, and called Simon Grieve to her own room.
“You have not found the boy yet?” she said, very stately and pale. “He must have wandered over into Yarrow; perhaps he has gone as far as Newark, and passed the night at the castle, or with the shepherd at Foulshiels.”
“No, my Lady,” said Simon Grieve, “some o’ the men went over to Newark, and some to Foulshiels, and other some down to Sir John Murray’s at Philiphaugh; but there’s never a word o’ Randal in a’ the country-side.”
“Did you find no trace of him?” said Lady Ker, sitting down suddenly in the great armchair.
“We went first through the wood, my Lady, by the path to the Wishing Well. And he had been there, for the whip he carried in his hand was lying on the grass. And we foundthis.”
He put his hand in his pouch, and brought out a little silver crucifix, that Randal used always to wear round his neck on a chain.
“This was lying on the grass beside the Wishing Well, my Lady—”
Then he stopped, for Lady Ker had swooned away. She was worn out with watching and with anxiety about Randal.
Simon went and called the maids, and they brought water and wine, and soon Lady Ker came back to herself, with the little silver crucifix in her hand.
The old nurse was crying, and making a great noise.
“The good folk have taken ma bairn,” she said, “this nicht o’ a’ the nichts in the year, when the fairy folk—preserve us frae them!—-have power. But they could nae take the blessed rood o’ grace; it was beyond their strength. If gipsies, or robber folk frae the Debatable Land, had carried away the bairn, they would hae taken him, cross and a’. But the guid folk have gotten him, and Randal Ker will never, never mair come hame to bonny Fairnilee.”
What the old nurse said was what everybody thought. Even Simon Grieve shook his head, and did not like it.
But Lady Ker did not give up hope. She sent horsemen through all the country-side: up Tweed to the Crook, and to Talla; up Yarrow, past Catslack Tower, and on to the Loch of Saint Mary; up Ettrick to Thirlestane and Buccleugh, and over to Gala, and to Branxholme in Teviotdale; and even to Hermitage Castle, far away by Liddel water.
They rode far and rode fast, and at every cottage and every tower they asked “had anyone seen a boy in green?” But nobody had seen Randal through all the country-side. Only a shepherd lad, on Foulshiels hill, had heard bells ringing in the night, and a sound of laughter go past him, like a breeze of wind over the heather.
Days went by, and all the country, was out to look for Randal. Down in Yetholme they sought him, among the gipsies; and across the Eden in merry Carlisle; and through the Land Debatable, where the robber Armstrongs and Grahames lived; and far down Tweed, past Melrose, and up Jed water, far into the Cheviot hills.
But there never came any word of Randal. He had vanished as if the earth had opened and swallowed him. Father Francis came from Melrose Abbey, and prayed with Lady Ker, and gave her all the comfort he could. He shook his head when he heard of the Wishing Well, but he said that no spirit of earth or air could have power for ever over a Christian soul. But, even when he spoke, he remembered that, once in seven years, the fairy folk have to pay a dreadful tax, one of themselves, to the King of a terrible country of Darkness; and what if they had stolen Randal, to pay the tax withhim!
This was what troubled good Father Francis, though, like a wise man, he said nothing about it, and even put the thought away out of his own mind.
But you may be sure that the old nurse had thought of this tax on the fairies too, and thatshedid not hold her peace about it, but spoke to everyone that would listen to her, and would have spoken to the mistress if she had been allowed. But when she tried to begin, Lady Ker told her that she had put her own trust in Heaven, and in the Saints. And she gave the nurse such a look when she said that, “if ever Jean heard of this, she would send nurse away from Fairnilee, out of the country,” that the old woman was afraid, and was quiet.
As for poor Jean, she was perhaps the most unhappy of them all. She thought to herself, if she had refused to go with Randal to the Wishing Well, and had run in and told Lady Ker, then Randal would never have started to find the Wishing Well. And she put herself in great danger, as she fancied, to find him. She wandered alone on the hills, seeking all the places that were believed to be haunted by fairies.
At every Fairy Knowe, as the country people called the little round green knolls in the midst of the heather, Jean would stoop her ear to the ground, trying to hear the voices of the fairies within. For it was believed that you might hear the sound of their speech, and the trampling of their horses, and the shouts of the fairy children. But no sound came, except the song of the burn flowing by, and the hum of gnats in the air, and thegock, gock, the cry of the grouse, when you frighten him in the heather.
Then Jeanie would try another way of meeting the fairies, and finding Randal. She would walk nine times round a Fairy Knowe, beginning from the left side, because then it was fancied that the hill-side would open, like a door, and show a path into Fairyland. But the hill-side never opened, and she never saw a single fairy; not even old Whuppity Stoorie sit with her spinning-wheel in a green glen, spinning grass into gold, and singing her fairy song:—
“I once was young and fair,My eyes were bright and blue,As if the sun shone through,And golden was my hair.“Down to my feet it rolledRuddy and ripe like corn,Upon an autumn morn,In heavy waves of gold.“Now am I grey and old,And so I sit and spin,With trembling hand and thin,This metal bright and cold.“I would give all the gain,These heaps of wealth untoldOf hard and glittering gold,Could I be young again!”
Chapter Eight
SO autumn came, and all the hill-sides were golden with the heather; and the red coral berries of the rowan trees hung from the boughs, and were wet with the spray of the waterfalls in the burns. And days grew shorter, and winter came with snow, but Randal never came back to Fairnilee. Season after season passed, and year after year. Lady Ker’s hair grew white like snow, and her face thin and pale—for she fasted often, as was the rule of her Church; all this was before the Reformation. And she slept little, praying half the night for Randal’s sake. And she went on pilgrimages to many shrines of the Saints: to St. Boswell and St. Rule’s, hard by the great Cathedral of St. Andrew’s on the sea. Nay, she went across the Border as far as the Abbey of St. Alban’s, and even to St. Thomas’s shrine of Canterbury, taking Jean with her. Many a weary mile they rode over hill and dale, and many an adventure they had, and ran many dangers from robbers, and soldiers disbanded from the wars.
But at last they had to come back to Fairnilee; and a sad place it was, and silent without the sound of Randal’s voice in the hall, and the noise of his hunting-horn in the woods. None of the people wore mourning for him, though they mourned in their hearts. For to put on black would look as if they had given up all hope. Perhaps most of them thought they would never see him again, but Jeanie was not one who despaired.
The years that had turned Lady Ker’s hair white, had made Jean a tall, slim lass—“very bonny,” everyone said; and the country people called her the Flower of Tweed. The Yarrow folk had their Flower of Yarrow, and why not the folk of Tweedside? It was now six years since Randal had been lost, and Jeanie was grown a young woman, about seventeen years old. She had always kept a hope that if Randal was with the Fairy Queen he would return perhaps in the seventh year. People said on the country-side that many a man and woman had escaped out of Fairyland after seven years’ imprisonment there.
Now the sixth year since Randal’s disappearance began very badly, and got worse as it went on. Just when spring should have been beginning, in the end of February, there came the most dreadful snowstorm. It blew and snowed, and blew again, and the snow was as fine as the dust on a road in summer. The strongest shepherds could not hold their own against the tempest, and were “smoored” (or smothered) in the waste. The flocks moved down from the hill-sides, down and down, till all the sheep on a farm would be gathered together in a crowd, under the shelter of a wood in some deep dip of the hills. The storm seemed as if it would never cease; for thirteen days the snow drifted and the wind blew. There was nothing for the sheep to eat, and if there had been hay enough, it would have been impossible to carry it to them. The poor beasts bit at the wool on each other’s backs, and so many of them died that the shepherds built walls with the dead bodies to keep the wind and snow away from those that were left alive.
There could be little work done on the farm that spring; and summer came in so cold and wet that the corn could not ripen, but was levelled to the ground. Then autumn was rainy, and the green sheaves lay out in the fields, and sprouted and rotted; so that little corn was reaped, and little flour could be made that year. Then in winter, and as spring came on, the people began to starve. They had no grain, and there were no potatoes in those days, and no rice; nor could corn be brought in from foreign countries. So men and women and children might be seen in the fields, with white pinched faces, gathering nettles to make soup, and digging for roots that were often little better than poison. They ground the bark of the fir trees, and mixed it with the little flour they could get; and they ate such beasts as never are eaten except in time of famine.
It is said that one very poor woman and her daughter always looked healthy and plump in these dreadful times, till people began to suspect them of being witches. And they were taken, and charged before the Sheriff with living by witchcraft, and very likely they would have been burned. So they confessed that they had fed ever since the famine began—on snails! But there were not snails enough for all the country-side, even if people had cared to eat them. So many men and women died, and more were very weak and ill.
Lady Ker spent all her money in buying food for her people. Jean and she lived on as little as they could, and were as careful as they could be. They sold all the beautiful silver plate, except the cup that Randal’s father used to drink out of long ago. But almost everything else was sold to buy corn.
So the weary year went on, and Midsummer Night came round—the seventh since the night when Randal was lost.
Then Jean did what she had always meant to do. In the afternoon she slipped out of the house of Fairnilee, taking a little bread in a basket, and saying that she, would go to see the farmer’s wife at Peel, which was on the other side of Tweed. But her mind was to go to the Wishing Well.
There she would wish for Randal back again, to help his mother in the evil times. And if she, too, passed away as he had passed out of sight and hearing, then at least she might meet him in that land where he had been carried.
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How strange it seemed to Jean to be doing everything over again that she had done seven years before. Then she had been a little girl, and it had been hard work for her to climb up the side of the Peel burn. Now she walked lightly and quickly, for she was tall and well-grown. Soon she reached the crest of the first hill, and remembered how she had sat down there and cried, when she was a child, and how the flies had tormented her. They were buzzing and teasing still; for good times or bad make no difference to them, as long as the sun shines. Then she reached the cairn at the top of the next hill, and far below her lay the forest, and deep within it ran Yarrow, glittering like silver.
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Jean paused a few moments, and then struck into a green path which led through the wood. The path wound beneath dark pines; their topmost branches, were red in the evening light, but the shade was black beneath them. Soon the path reached a little grassy glade, and there among cold, wet grasses was the Wishing Well. It was almost hidden by the grass, and looked very black, and cool, and deep. A tiny trickle of water flowed out of it, flowed down to join the Yarrow. The trees about it had scraps of rags and other things pinned to them, offerings made by the country people to the spirits of the well.
Chapter Nine
JEANIE sat down beside the well. She wished her three wishes: to see Randal, to win him back from Fairyland, and to help the people in the famine. Then she knelt on the grass, and looked down into the well-water. At first she saw nothing but the smooth black water, with little waves trembling in it. Then the water began to grow bright within, as if the sun was shining far, far below. Then it grew as clear as crystal, and she saw through it, like a glass, into a new country—a beautiful country with a wide green plain, and in the midst of the plain a great castle, with golden flags floating from the tops of all the towers. Then she heard a curious whispering noise that thrilled and murmured, as if the music of all the trees that the wind blows through the world were in her ears, as if the noise of all the waves of every sea, and the rustling of heather-bells on every hill, and the singing of all birds were sounding, low and sweet, far, far away. Then she saw a great company of knights and ladies, dressed in green, ride up to the castle; and one knight rode apart from the rest, on a milk-white steed. They all went into the castle gates; but this knight rode slowly and sadly behind the others, with his head bowed on his breast.
Then the musical sounds were still, and the castle and the plain seemed to wave in the water. Next they quite vanished, and the well grew dim, and then grew dark and black and smooth as it had been before. Still she looked, and the little well bubbled up with sparkling foam, and so became still again, like a mirror, till Jeanie could see her own face in it, and beside her face came the reflection of another face, a young man’s, dark, and sad, and beautiful. The lips smiled at her, and then Jeanie knew it was Randal. She thought he must be looking over her shoulder, and she leaped up with a cry, and glanced round.
But she was all alone, and the wood about her was empty and silent. The light had gone out of the sky, which was pale like silver, and overhead she saw the evening star.
Then Jeanie thought all was over. She had seen Randal as if it had been in a glass, and she hardly knew him: he was so much older, and his face was so sad. She sighed, and turned to go away over the hills, back, to Fairnilee.
But her feet did not seem to carry her the way she wanted to go. It seemed as if something within her were moving her in a kind of dream. She felt herself going on through the forest, she did not know where. Deeper into the wood she went, and now it grew so dark that she saw scarce anything; only she felt the fragrance of briar roses, and it seemed to her that she was guided towards these roses. Then she knew there was a hand in her hand, though she saw nobody, and the hand seemed to lead her on. And she came to an open place in the forest, and there the silver light fell clear from the sky, and she saw a great shadowy rose tree, covered with white wild roses.
The hand was still in her hand, and Jeanie began to wish for nothing so much in the world as to gather some of these roses. She put out her hand and she plucked one, and there before her stood a strange creature—a dwarf, dressed in yellow and red, with a very angry face.
“Who are you,” he cried, “that pluck my roses without my will?”
“And who areyou?” said Jeanie, trembling, “and what right have you on the hills of this world?”
Then she made the holy sign of the cross, and the face of the elf grew black, and the light went out of the sky.
She only saw the faint glimmer of the white flowers, and a kind of shadow standing where the dwarf stood.
“I bid you tell me,” said Jeanie, “whether you are a Christian man, or a spirit that dreads the holy sign,” and she crossed him again.
Now all grew dark as the darkest winter’s night. The air was warm and deadly still, and heavy with the scent of the fairy flowers.
In the blackness and the silence, Jeanie made the sacred sign for the third time. Then a clear fresh wind blew on her face, and the forest boughs were shaken, and the silver light grew and gained on the darkness, and she began to see a shape standing where the dwarf had stood. It was far taller than the dwarf and the light grew and grew, and a star looked down out of the night, and Jean saw Randal standing by her. And she kissed him, and he kissed her, and he put his hand in hers, and they went out of the wood together. They came to the crest of the hill and the cairn. Far below them they saw the Tweed shining through an opening among the trees, and the lights in the farm of Peel, and they heard the nightbirds crying, and the bells of the sheep ringing musically as they wandered through the fragrant heather on the hills.
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Chapter Ten
YOU may fancy, if you can, what joy there was in Fairnilee when Randal came home. They quite forgot the hunger and the hard times, and the old nurse laughed and cried over her bairn that had grown into a tall, strong young man. And to Lady Ker it was all one as if her husband had come again, as he was when first she knew him long ago; for Randal had his face, and his eyes, and the very sound of his voice. They could hardly believe he was not a spirit, and they clasped his hands, and hung on his neck, and could not keep their eyes off him. This was the end of all their sorrow, and it was as if Randal had come back from the dead; so that no people in the world were ever so happy as they were next day, when the sun shone down on the Tweed and the green trees that rustle in the wind round Fairnilee. But in the evening, when the old nurse was out of the way, Randal sat between his mother and Jean, and they each held his hands, as if they could not let him go, for fear he should vanish away from them again. And they would turn round anxiously if anything stirred, for fear it should be the two white deer that sometimes were said to come for people escaped from Fairyland, and then these people must rise and follow them, and never return any more. But the white deer never came for Randal.
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So he told them all his adventures, and all that had happened to him since that midsummer night, seven long years ago.
It had been with him as it was with Jean He had gone to the Wishing Well, and wished to see the Fairy Queen and Fairyland. And he had seen the beautiful castle in the well, and a beautiful woman’s face had floated up to meet his on the water. Then he had gathered the white roses, and then he heard a great sound of horses’ feet, and of bells jingling, and a lady rode up, the very lady he had seen in the well. She had a white horse, and she was dressed in green, and she beckoned to Randal to mount on her horse, with her before him on the pillion. And the bells on the bridle rang, and the horse flew faster than the wind.
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So they rode and rode through the summer night, and they came to a desert place, and living lands were left far behind. Then the Fairy Queen showed him three paths, one steep and narrow, and beset with briars and thorns: that was the road to goodness and happiness, but it was little trodden or marked with the feet of people that had come and gone.
And there was a wide smooth road that went through fields of lilies, and that was the path of easy living and pleasure.
The third path wound about the wild hillside, through ferns and heather, and that was the way to Elfland, and that way they rode. And still they rode through a country of dark night, and they crossed great black rivers, and they saw neither sun nor moon, but they heard the roaring of the sea. From that country they came into the light, and into the beautiful garden that lies round the castle of the Fairy Queen. There they lived in a noble company of gallant knights and fair ladies. All seemed very mirthful, and they rode, and hunted, and danced; and it was never dark night, nor broad daylight, but like early summer dawn before the sun has risen.
There Randal said that he had quite forgotten his mother and Jean, and the world where he was born, and Fairnilee.
But one day he happened to see a beautiful golden bottle of a strange shape, all set with diamonds, and he opened it. There was in it a sweet-smelling water, as clear as crystal, and he poured it into his hand, and passed his hand over his eyes. Now this water had the power to destroy the “glamour” in Fairyland, and make people see it as it really was. And when Randal touched his eyes with it, lo, everything was changed in a moment. He saw that nothing was what it had seemed. The gold vanished from the embroidered curtains, the light grew dim and wretched like a misty winter day.
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The Fairy Queen, that had seemed so happy and beautiful in her bright dress, was a weary, pale woman in black, with a melancholy face and melancholy eyes. She looked as if she had been there for thousands of years, always longing for the sunlight and the earth, and the wind and rain. There were sleepy poppies twisted in her hair, instead of a golden crown. And the knights and ladies were changed. They looked but half alive; and some, in place of their gay green robes, were dressed in rusty mail, pierced with spears and stained with blood. And some were in burial robes of white, and some in dresses torn or dripping with water, or marked with the burning of fire. All were dressed strangely in some ancient fashion; their weapons were old-fashioned, too, unlike any that Randal had ever seen on earth. And their festivals were not of dainty meats, but of cold, tasteless flesh, and of beans, and pulse, and such things as the old heathens, before the coming of the Gospel, used to offer to the dead. It was dreadful to see them at such feasts, and dancing, and riding, and pretending to be merry with hollow faces and unhappy eyes.
And Randal wearied of Fairyland, which now that he saw it clearly looked like a great unending stretch of sand and barren grassy country, beside a grey sea where there was no tide. All the woods were of black cypress trees and poplar, and a wind from the sea drove a sea-mist through them, white and cold, and it blew through the open courts of the fairy castle.
So Randal longed more and more for the old earth he had left, and the changes of summer and autumn? and the streams of Tweed, and the hills, and his friends. Then the voice of Jeanie had come down to him, sounding from far away. And he was sent up by the Fairy Queen in a fairy form, as a hideous dwarf, to frighten her away from the white roses in the enchanted forest.
But her goodness and her courage had saved him, for he was a christened knight, and not a man of the fairy world. And he had taken his own form again beneath her hand, when she signed him with the Cross, and here he was, safe and happy, at home at Fairnilee.
Chapter Eleven
WE soon grow used to the greatest changes, and almost forget the things that we were accustomed to before. In a day or two, Randal had nearly forgotten what a dull life he had lived in Fairyland, after he had touched his eyes with the strange water in the fairy bottle. He remembered the long, grey sands, and the cold mist, and the white faces of the strange people, and the gloomy queen, no more than you remember the dream you dreamed a week ago. But he did notice that Fairnilee was not the happy place it had been before he went away. Here, too, the faces were pinched and white, and the people looked hungry. And he missed many things that he remembered: the silver cups, and plates, and tankards. And the dinners were not like what they had been, but only a little thin soup, and some oatmeal cakes, and trout taken from the Tweed. The beef and ale of old times were not to be found, even in the houses of the richer people.
Very soon Randal heard all about the famine; you may be sure the old nurse was ready to tell him all the saddest stories.
“Full many a place in evil case Where joy was wont afore, oh! Wi’ Humes that dwell in Leader braes, And Scotts that dwell in Yarrow!”
And the old woman would croon her old prophecies, and tell them how Thomas the Rhymer, that lived in Ercildoune, had foretold all this. And she would wish they could find these hidden treasures that the rhymes were full of, and that maybe were lying—who knew?—quite near them on their own lands.
“Where is the Gold of Fairnilee?” she would cry; “and, oh, Randal! can you no dig for it, and find it, and buy corn out of England for the poor folk that are dying at your doors?
‘Atween the wet ground and the dryThe Gold o’ Fairnilee doth lie.’
There it is, with the sun never glinting on it; there it may bide till the Judgment-day, and no man the better for it.
‘Between the Camp o’ RinkAnd Tweed water clear,Lie nine kings’ ransomsFor nine hundred year.’”
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“I doubt it’s fairy gold, nurse,” said Randal, “and would all turn black when it saw the sun. It would just be like this bottle, the only thing I brought with me out of Fairyland.”
Then Randal put his hand in his velvet pouch, and brought out a curious small bottle.* It was shaped like this,
and was made of something that none of them had ever seen before. It was black, and you could see the light through it, and there were green and yellow spots and streaks on it.
* In bottles like this, the old Romans used to keep theirtears for their dead friends.
“That ugly bottle looked like gold and diamonds when I found it in Fairyland,” said Randal, “and the water in it smelled as sweet as roses. But when I touched my eyes with it, a drop that ran into my mouth was as salt as the sea, and immediately everything changed: the gold bottle became this glass thing, and the fairies became like folk dead, and the sky grew grey, and all turned waste and ugly. That’s the way with fairy gold, nurse; and if you found it, even, it would all be dry leaves and black bits of coal before the sun set.”
“Maybe so, and maybe no,” said the old nurse. “The Gold o’ Fairnilee may no be fairy gold, but just wealth o’ this world that folk buried here lang syne. But noo, Randal, ma bairn, I maun gang out and see ma sister’s son’s dochter, that’s lying sair sick o’ the kincough* at Rink, and take her some of the physic that I gae you and Jean when you were bairns.”
* Kincough, whooping cough.
So the old nurse went out, and Randal and Jean began to be sorry for the child she was going to visit. For they remembered the taste of the physic that the old nurse made by boiling the bark of elder-tree branches; and I remember it too, for it was the very nastiest thing that ever was tasted, and did nobody any good after all.
Then Randal and Jean walked out, strolling along without much noticing where they went, and talking about the pleasant days when they were children.
Chapter Twelve
THEY had climbed up the slope of a hill, and they came to a broad old ditch, beneath the shade of a wood of pine trees. Below them was a wide marsh, all yellow with marsh flowers, and above them was a steep slope made of stones. Now the dry ditch, where they sat down on the grass, looking towards the Tweed, with their backs to the hill, was called theCatrail. It ran all through that country, and must have been made by men very long ago. Nobody knows who made it, nor why. They did not know in Randal’s time, and they do not know now. They do not even know what the nameCatrailmeans, but that is what it has always been called. The steep slope of stone above them was named the Camp of Rink; it is a round place, like a ring, and no doubt it was built by the old Britons, when they fought against the Romans, many hundreds of years ago. The stones of which it is built are so large that we cannot tell how men moved them. But it is a very pleasant, happy place on a warm summer day, like the day when Randal and Jean sat there, with the daisies at their feet, and the wild doves cooing above their heads, and the rabbits running in and out among the ferns.
Jean and Randal talked about this and that, chiefly of how some money could be got to buy corn and cattle for the people. Randal was in favour of crossing the Border at night, and driving away cattle from the English side, according to the usual custom.
“Every day I expect to see a pair of spurs in a dish for all our dinner,” said Randal.
That was the sign the lady of the house in the Forest used to give her men, when all the beef was done, and more had to be got by fighting.
But Jeanie would not hear of Randal taking spear and jack, and putting himself in danger by fighting the English. They were her own people after all, though she could not remember them and the days before she was carried out of England by Simon Grieve.
“Then,” said Randal, “am I to go back to Fairyland, and fetch more gold like this ugly thing?” and he felt in his pocket for the fairy bottle.
But it was not in his pocket.
“What have I done with my fairy treasure?” cried Randal, jumping up. Then he stood still quite suddenly, as if he saw something strange.
He touched Jean on the shoulder, making a sign to her not to speak.
Jean rose quietly, and looked where Randal pointed, and this was what she saw.
She looked over a corner of the old grassy ditch, just where the marsh and the yellow flowers came nearest to it.
Here there stood three tall grey stones, each about as high as a man. Between them, with her back to the single stone, and between the two others facing Randal and Jean, the old nurse was kneeling.
If she had looked up, she could hardly have seen Randal and Jean, for they were within the ditch, and only their eyes were on the level of the rampart.
Besides, she did not look up; she was groping in the breast of her dress for something, and her eyes were on the ground.
“What can the old woman be doing?” whispered Randal. “Why, she has got my fairy bottle in her hand!”
Then he remembered how he had shown her the bottle, and how she had gone out without giving it back to him.
Jean and he watched, and kept very quiet.
They saw the old nurse, still kneeling, take the stopper out of the black strange bottle, and turn the open mouth gently on her hand. Then she carefully put in the stopper, and rubbed her eyes with the palm of her hand. Then she crawled along in their direction, very slowly, as if she were looking for something in the grass.
Then she stopped, still looking very closely at the grass.
Next she jumped to her feet with a shrill cry, clapping her hands; and then she turned, and was actuallyrunningalong the edge of the marsh, towards Fairnilee.
“Nurse!” shouted Randal, and she stopped suddenly, in a fright, and let the fairy bottle fall.
It struck on a stone, and broke to pieces with a jingling sound, and the few drops of strange water in it ran away into the grass.
“Oh, ma bairns, ma bairns, what have you made me do?” cried the old nurse pitifully. “The fairy gift is broken, and maybe the Gold of Fairnilee, that my eyes have looked on, will ne’er be seen again.”