e a fairy. He put the image in her hand, and
set his finger on his lips to show that she must not speak.

Then he went back to the great stone coffin, and began to grope in
it with his hands. There was much earth in it that had slowly sifted
through during the many years that it, had been buried. But there was
also a great round bowl of metal and a square box.

Randal got out the bowl first. It was covered with a green rust, and had
a lid; in short, it was a large ancient kettle, such as soldiers use in
camp. Randal got the lid off, and, behold, it was all full of very
ancient gold coins, not Greek nor Roman, but like such in use in Briton
before Julius Caesar came.

The box was of iron. On the lid, in the moonshine, Jeanie could read the
letters S. P. Q. R., but she did not know what they meant. The box had
been locked, and chained, and clamped with iron bars. But all was so
rusty that the bars were easily broken, and the lid torn off.

[Illustration: Page 309]

Then the moon shone on bars of gold, and on great plates and dishes of
gold and silver, marked with letters, and with what Randal thought
were crests. Many of the cups were studded with red and green and blue
stones. And there were beautiful plates and dishes, purple, gold, and
green; and one of these fell, and broke into a thousand pieces, for it
was of some strange kind of glass. There were three gold sword-hilts,
carved wonderfully into the figures of strange beasts with wings, and
heads like lions.

Randal and Jean looked at it and marvelled, and Jean sang in a low,
sweet voice:

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

Nobody ever saw so much treasure in all broad Scotland.

Jean and Randal passed the rest of the night in hiding what they had
found. Part they hid in the secret chamber of Fairnilee, of which only
Jean and Lady Ker and Randal knew the secret. The rest they stowed away
in various places. Then Randal filled the earth into the trench, and
cast wood on the place, and set fire to the wood, so that next day there
was nothing there but ashes and charred earth.

You will not need to be told what Randal did, now that he had treasure
in plenty. Some he sold in France, to the king, Henry II., and some in
Rome, to the Pope; and with the money which they gave him he bought corn
and cattle in England, enough to feed all his neighbours, and stock the
farms, and sow