The Gold of Fairnilee | Page 9

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,
and Yarrow had tracked them till Jean was found.
[Illustration: Chapter Seven]

CHAPTER VII.
--Where is Randal?
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