And the old woman would croon her old prophecies, and tell them how
Thomas the Rhymer, that lived in Ercildoune, had foretold all this. And
she would wish they could find these hidden treasures that the rhymes
were full of, and that maybe were lying--who knew?--quite near them on
their own lands.

"Where is the Gold of Fairnilee?" she would cry; "and, oh, Randal! can
you no dig for it, and find it, and buy corn out of England for the poor
folk that are dying at your doors?

'Atween the wet ground and the dry
The Gold o' Fairnilee doth lie.'

There it is, with the sun never glinting on it; there it may bide till
the Judgment-day, and no man the better for it.

'Between the Camp o' Rink
And Tweed water clear,
Lie nine kings' ransoms
For nine hundred year.'"

"I doubt it's fairy gold, nurse," said Randal, "and would all turn black
when it saw the sun. It would just be like this bottle, the only thing I
brought with me out of Fairyland."

Then Randal put his hand in his velvet pouch, and brought out a curious
small bottle.* It was shaped like this,

[Illustration: Page 298]

and was made of something that none of them had ever seen before. It was
black, and you could see the light through it, and there were green and
yellow spots and streaks on it.

* In bottles like this, the old Romans used to keep their
tears for their dead friends.

"That ugly bottle looked like gold and diamonds when I found it in
Fairyland," said Randal, "and the water in it smelled as sweet as
roses. But when I touched my eyes with it, a drop that ran into my mouth
was as salt as the sea, and immediately everything changed: the gold
bottle became this glass thing, and the fairies became like folk dead,
and the sky grew grey, and all turned waste and ugly. That's the way
with fairy gold, nurse; and if you found it, even, it would all be dry
leaves and black bits of coal before the sun set."

"Maybe so, and maybe no," said the old nurse. "The Gold o' Fairnilee may
no be fairy gold, but just wealth o' this world that folk buried
here lang syne. But noo, Randal, ma bairn, I maun gang out and see ma
sister's son's dochter, that's lying sair sick o' the kincough* at Rink,
and take her some of the physic that I gae you and Jean when you were
bairns."

* Kincough, whooping cough.

So the old nurse went out, and Randal and Jean began to be sorry for
the child she was going to visit. For they reme