had opened and swallowed him. Father Francis came from Melrose Abbey,
and prayed with Lady Ker, and gave her all the comfort he could. He
shook his head when he heard of the Wishing Well, but he said that no
spirit of earth or air could have power for ever over a Christian soul.
But, even when he spoke, he remembered that, once in seven years, the
fairy folk have to pay a dreadful tax, one of themselves, to the King of
a terrible country of Darkness; and what if they had stolen Randal, to
pay the tax with _him!_

This was what troubled good Father Francis, though, like a wise man,
he said nothing about it, and even put the thought away out of his own
mind.

But you may be sure that the old nurse had thought of this tax on the
fairies too, and that _she_ did not hold her peace about it, but spoke
to everyone that would listen to her, and would have spoken to the
mistress if she had been allowed. But when she tried to begin, Lady Ker
told her that she had put her own trust in Heaven, and in the Saints.
And she gave the nurse such a look when she said that, "if ever Jean
heard of this, she would send nurse away from Fairnilee, out of the
country," that the old woman was afraid, and was quiet.

As for poor Jean, she was perhaps the most unhappy of them all. She
thought to herself, if she had refused to go with Randal to the Wishing
Well, and had run in and told Lady Ker, then Randal would never have
started to find the Wishing Well. And she put herself in great danger,
as she fancied, to find him. She wandered alone on the hills, seeking
all the places that were believed to be haunted by fairies.

At every Fairy Knowe, as the country people called the little round
green knolls in the midst of the heather, Jean would stoop her ear to
the ground, trying to hear the voices of the fairies within. For it
was believed that you might hear the sound of their speech, and the
trampling of their horses, and the shouts of the fairy children. But no
sound came, except the song of the burn flowing by, and the hum of
gnats in the air, and the _gock, gock_, the cry of the grouse, when you
frighten him in the heather.

Then Jeanie would try another way of meeting the fairies, and finding
Randal. She would walk nine times round a Fairy Knowe, beginning from
the left side, because then it was fancied that the hill-side would
open, like a door, and show a path into Fairyland. But the hill-side
never opened, and she never saw a single fair