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 found _this_.”
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 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 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 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!”
[Illustration: Chapter Eight]