"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 hors.e.m.e.n 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 n.o.body 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 with _him!_
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 that _she_ did 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 the _gock, 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 gra.s.s 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 rolled Ruddy 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 untold Of hard and glittering gold, Could I be young again!"
[Ill.u.s.tration: Chapter Eight]
CHAPTER VIII.--_The Ill Years_
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 pa.s.sed, 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 la.s.s--"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, pa.s.sed away as he had pa.s.sed out of sight and hearing, then at least she might meet him in that land where he had been carried.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Page 281]
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.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Page 282]
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 gra.s.sy glade, and there among cold, wet gra.s.ses was the Wishing Well. It was almost hidden by the gra.s.s, 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 sc.r.a.ps of rags and other things pinned to them, offerings made by the country people to the spirits of the well.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Chapter Nine]
CHAPTER IX.--_The White Roses_
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 gra.s.s, 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 gla.s.s, 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 gla.s.s, 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 n.o.body, 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 are _you?_" 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.