before the coming of the Gospel, used to
offer to the dead. It was dreadful to see them at such feasts, and
dancing, and riding, and pretending to be merry with hollow faces and
unhappy eyes.

And Randal wearied of Fairyland, which now that he saw it clearly looked
like a great unending stretch of sand and barren grassy country, beside
a grey sea where there was no tide. All the woods were of black cypress
trees and poplar, and a wind from the sea drove a sea-mist through them,
white and cold, and it blew through the open courts of the fairy castle.

So Randal longed more and more for the old earth he had left, and the
changes of summer and autumn? and the streams of Tweed, and the hills,
and his friends. Then the voice of Jeanie had come down to him, sounding
from far away. And he was sent up by the Fairy Queen in a fairy form,
as a hideous dwarf, to frighten her away from the white roses in the
enchanted forest.

But her goodness and her courage had saved him, for he was a christened
knight, and not a man of the fairy world. And he had taken his own form
again beneath her hand, when she signed him with the Cross, and here he
was, safe and happy, at home at Fairnilee.

[Illustration: Chapter Eleven]

CHAPTER XI.--_The Fairy Bottle_

WE soon grow used to the greatest changes, and almost forget the things
that we were accustomed to before. In a day or two, Randal had nearly
forgotten what a dull life he had lived in Fairyland, after he had
touched his eyes with the strange water in the fairy bottle. He
remembered the long, grey sands, and the cold mist, and the white faces
of the strange people, and the gloomy queen, no more than you remember
the dream you dreamed a week ago. But he did notice that Fairnilee was
not the happy place it had been before he went away. Here, too, the
faces were pinched and white, and the people looked hungry. And he
missed many things that he remembered: the silver cups, and plates, and
tankards. And the dinners were not like what they had been, but only
a little thin soup, and some oatmeal cakes, and trout taken from the
Tweed. The beef and ale of old times were not to be found, even in the
houses of the richer people.

Very soon Randal heard all about the famine; you may be sure the old
nurse was ready to tell him all the saddest stories.

"Full many a place in evil case Where joy was wont afore, oh! Wi' Humes
that dwell in Leader braes, And Scotts that dwell in Yarrow!"