the fields for next year. And Fairnilee became a very
rich and fortunate house, for Randal married Jean, and soon their
children were playing on the banks of the Tweed, and rolling down the
grassy slope to the river, to bathe on hot days. And the old nurse lived
long and happy among her new bairns, and often she told them how it was
_she_ who really found the Gold of Fairnilee.

[Illustration: Page 311]

You may wonder what the gold was, and how it came there? Probably Father
Francis, the good Melrose Monk, was right. He said that the iron box and
the gold image of Fortune, and the kettle full of coins, had belonged
to some regiment of the Roman army: the kettle and the coins, they must
have taken from the Britons; the box and all the plate were their
own, and brought from Italy. Then they, in their turn, must have been
defeated by some of the fierce tribes beyond the Roman wall, and
must have lost all their treasure. That must have been buried by the
victorious enemy; and _they_, again, must have been driven from their
strong camp at Rink, either by some foes from the north, or by a new
Roman army from the south. So all the gold lay at Fairnilee for many
hundred years, never quite forgotten, as the old rhyme showed, but never
found till it was discovered, in their sore need, by the old nurse and
Randal and Jean.

As for Randal and Jean, they lived to be old, and died on one day, and
they are buried at Dryburgh in one tomb, and a green tree grows over
them; and the Tweed goes murmuring past their grave, and past the grave
of Sir Walter Scott.

THE END.

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