y; not even old Whuppity
Stoorie sit with her spinning-wheel in a green glen, spinning grass into
gold, and singing her fairy song:--

"I once was young and fair,
My eyes were bright and blue,
As if the sun shone through,
And golden was my hair.

"Down to my feet it rolled
Ruddy and ripe like corn,
Upon an autumn morn,
In heavy waves of gold.

"Now am I grey and old,
And so I sit and spin,
With trembling hand and thin,
This metal bright and cold.

"I would give all the gain,
These heaps of wealth untold
Of hard and glittering gold,
Could I be young again!"

[Illustration: Chapter Eight]

CHAPTER VIII.--_The Ill Years_

SO autumn came, and all the hill-sides were golden with the heather; and
the red coral berries of the rowan trees hung from the boughs, and
were wet with the spray of the waterfalls in the burns. And days grew
shorter, and winter came with snow, but Randal never came back to
Fairnilee. Season after season passed, and year after year. Lady Ker's
hair grew white like snow, and her face thin and pale--for she
fasted often, as was the rule of her Church; all this was before the
Reformation. And she slept little, praying half the night for Randal's
sake. And she went on pilgrimages to many shrines of the Saints: to St.
Boswell and St. Rule's, hard by the great Cathedral of St. Andrew's
on the sea. Nay, she went across the Border as far as the Abbey of St.
Alban's, and even to St. Thomas's shrine of Canterbury, taking Jean
with her. Many a weary mile they rode over hill and dale, and many an
adventure they had, and ran many dangers from robbers, and soldiers
disbanded from the wars.

But at last they had to come back to Fairnilee; and a sad place it was,
and silent without the sound of Randal's voice in the hall, and the
noise of his hunting-horn in the woods. None of the people wore mourning
for him, though they mourned in their hearts. For to put on black would
look as if they had given up all hope. Perhaps most of them thought they
would never see him again, but Jeanie was not one who despaired.

The years that had turned Lady Ker's hair white, had made Jean a tall,
slim lass--"very bonny," everyone said; and the country people called
her the Flower of Tweed. The Yarrow folk had their Flower of Yarrow,
and why not the folk of Tweedside? It was now six years since Randal
had been lost, and Jeanie was grown