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 conf