reads of wool. Then
someone brought chains of forged steel, and they bound those round his
limbs, thinking that now they surely had him in their power; but he
burst them as easily as if they had been made of tow.

At this everyone was daunted, and would have let him go, but Thomas of
Ercildoune cried cheerily, "We'll bind him yet, lads, whatever betide."

As he spoke, he drew out from his bosom a little black leather-covered
book, and at the sight of it all the spearmen fell back in awe. For it
was Sir Michael Scott's "Book of Might," and, as I have said, Sir
Michael was a wizard himself, and knew all about warlocks and witches,
with their charms and spells, and he could undo everyone of them, and he
had written all this knowledge down in his black Spae-book. When he
died, the book had been buried deep in his grave in the Abbey at
Melrose, and True Thomas had gone there, and recovered it, and he had
brought it with him to aid Bold Walter of Buccleuch in rescuing his
brother.

He turned over the leaves, and at last he found the place where Sir
Michael had told how it was possible to bind a charmed man.

"Ye cannot bind a wizard with ropes," he read, "unless they be ropes of
sifted sand."

"Where can we get some sifted sand?" he asked, and everyone looked round
in dismay, for there was no sand there, under the trees.

"Come to the Nine-stane Rig," cried a man; "there is a burn[25] runs
past the bottom of it, and we will find plenty of sand there."

[Footnote 25: Stream.]

Thou knowest the Nine-stane Rig, little Annie, the hill that slopes down
to Hermitage Water, with the circle of great stones standing on it,
which, 'tis said, were placed there by wild and heathen men, hundreds of
years ago. Well, they carried Lord Soulis there, and hurried him down to
the burn, and they shaped ropes out of the sand that lies smooth and
clean by the water-side.

But, shape the ropes as they might, they would neither twist nor twine;
the dry sand just ran through their fingers, and once again they were
baffled. Once more True Thomas turned to the spae-book, and this time he
found that the sand would twist more easily if it were mixed with barley
chaff, and the men of Teviotdale ran down the valley until they came to
a field of growing barley. They pulled the ripe grain and beat it in
their hands, and it was not long ere they returned with a napkin full of
chaff. They mixed nine handfuls of it with the sand, for it was thus the