The Gold of Fairnilee | Page 2

sight. And Randal
saw them ride away, not on hard, smooth roads like ours, but along a
green grassy track, the water splashing up to their stirrups where they
crossed the marshes.
[Illustration: Page 240]
Then the sky turned as red as blood, in the sunset, and next it grew
brown, like the rust on a sword; and the Tweed below, when they rode
the ford, was all red and gold and brown.
Then time went on; that seemed a long time to Randal. Only the
women were left in the house, and Randal played with the shepherd's
children. They sailed boats in the mill-pond, and they went down to the
boat-pool and watched to see the big copper-coloured salmon splashing
in the still water. One evening Randal looked up suddenly from his
play. It was growing dark. He had been building a house with the round
stones and wet sand by the river. He looked up, and there was his own
father! He was riding all alone, and his horse, Sir Hugh, was very lean
and lame, and scarred with the spurs. The spear in his father's hand was
broken, and he had no sword; and he looked neither to right nor to left.
His eyes were wide open, but he seemed to see nothing.
Randal cried out to him, "Father! Father!" but he never glanced at
Randal. He did not look as if he heard him, or knew he was there, and
suddenly he seemed to go away, Randal did not know how or where.
Randal was frightened.

He ran into the house, and went to his mother.
"Oh, mother," he said, "I have seen father! He was riding all alone, and
he would not look at me. Sir Hugh was lame!"
"Where has he gone?" said Lady Ker, in a strange voice.
"He went away out of sight," said Randal. "I could not see where he
went."
Then his mother told him it could not be, that his father would not have
come back alone. He would not leave his men behind him in the war.
But Randal was so sure, that she did not scold him. She knew he
believed what he said.
He saw that she was not happy.
All that night, which was the Fourth of September, in the year 1513, the
day of Flodden fight, Randal's mother did not go to bed. She kept
moving about the house. Now she would look from the tower window
up Tweed; and now she would go along the gallery and look down
Tweed from the other tower. She had lights burning in all the windows.
All next day she was never still. She climbed, with two of her maids, to
the top of the hill above Yair, on the other side of the river, and she
watched the roads down Ettrick and Yarrow. Next night she slept little,
and rose early. About noon, Randal saw three or four men riding
wearily, with tired horses. They could scarcely cross the ford of Tweed,
the horses were so tired. The men were Simon Grieve the butler, and
some of the tenants. They looked very pale; some of them had their
heads tied up, and there was blood on their faces. Lady Ker and Randal
ran to meet them.
Simon Grieve lighted from his horse, and whispered to Randal's
mother.
Randal did not hear what he said, but his mother cried, "I knew it! I
knew it!" and turned quite white.

"Where is he?" she said.
Simon pointed across the hill. "They are bringing the corp," he said.
Randal knew the "corp" meant the dead body.
He began to cry. "Where is my father?" he said, "where is my father?"
His mother led him into the house. She gave him to the old nurse, who
cried over him, and kissed him, and offered him cakes, and made him a
whistle with a branch of plane tree, So in a short while Randal only felt
puzzled. Then he forgot, and began to play. He was a very little boy.
Lady Ker shut herself up in her own room--her "bower," the servants
called it.
Soon Randal heard heavy steps on the stairs, and whispering. He
wanted to run out, and his nurse caught hold of him, and would not
have let him go, but he slipped out of her hand, and looked over the
staircase.
They were bringing up the body of a man stretched on a shield.
It was Randal's father.
He had been slain at Flodden, fighting for the king. An arrow had gone
through his brain, and he had fallen beside James IV., with many
another brave knight, all the best of Scotland, the Flowers of the Forest.
What was it Randal saw, when he thought he met his father