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.
[Illustration: 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.
[Illustration: 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 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.
[Illustration: Chapter Nine]