The Gold of Fairnilee | Page 4

kitten."

[Illustration: Page 248]
Then Randal tugged at the cloths, and then they all heard a little shrill
cry.
"Why, it's a bairn!" said Lady Ker, who had sat very grave all the time,
pleased to have done the English some harm; for they had killed her
husband, and were all her deadly foes. "It's a bairn!" she cried, and
pulled out of the great heap of cloaks and rugs a little beautiful child, in
its white nightdress, with its yellow curls all tangled over its blue eyes.
Then Lady Ker and the old nurse could not make too much of the pretty
English child that had come here in such a wonderful way.
How did it get mixed up with all the spoil? and how had it been carried
so far on horseback without being hurt? Nobody ever knew. It came as
if the fairies had sent it. English it was, but the best Scot could not hate
such a pretty child. Old Nancy Dryden ran up to the old nursery with it,
and laid it in a great wooden tub full of hot water, and was giving it
warm milk to drink, and dandling it, almost before the men knew what
had happened.
"Yon bairn will be a bonny mate for you, Maister Randal," said old
Simon Grieve. "'Deed, I dinna think her kin will come speering* after
her at Fairnilee. The Red Cock's crawing ower Hardriding Ha' this day,
and when the womenfolk come back frae the wood, they'll hae other
thing to do for-bye looking for bairns."
* Asking.
When Simon Grieve said that the Red Cock was crowing over his
enemies' home, he meant that he had set it on fire after the people who
lived in it had run away.
Lady Ker grew pale when she heard what he said. She hated the
English, to be sure, but she was a woman with a kind heart. She
thought of the dreadful danger that the little English girl had escaped,
and she went upstairs and helped the nurse to make the child happy.

[Illustration: Chapter Four]
CHAPTER IV.
--Randal and Jean.
THE little girl soon made everyone at Fairnilee happy. She was far too
young to remember her own home, and presently she was crawling up
and down the long hall and making friends with Randal. They found
out that her name was Jane Musgrave, though she could hardly say
Musgrave; and they called her Jean, with their Scotch tongues, or "Jean
o' the Kye," because she came when the cows were driven home again.
Soon the old nurse came to like her near as well as Randal, "her ain
bairn" (her own child), as she called him. In the summer days, Jean, as
she grew older, would follow Randal about like a little doggie. They
went fishing together, and Randal would pull the trout out of Caddon
Burn, or the Burn of Peel; and Jeanie would be very proud of him, and
very much alarmed at the big, wide jaws of the yellow trout. And
Randal would plait helmets with green rushes for her and him, and
make spears of bulrushes, and play at tilts and tournaments. There was
peace in the country; or if there was war, it did not come near the quiet
valley of the Tweed and the hills that lie round Fairnilee. In summer
they were always on the hills and by the burnsides.
You cannot think, if you have not tried, what pleasant company a burn
is. It comes out of the deep; black wells in the moss, far away on the
tops of the hills, where the sheep feed, and the fox peers from his hole,
and the ravens build in the crags. The burn flows down from the lonely
places, cutting a way between steep, green banks, tumbling in white
waterfalls over rocks, and lying in black, deep pools below the
waterfalls. At every turn it does something new, and plays a fresh game
with its brown waters. The white pebbles in the water look like gold:
often Randal would pick one out and think he had found a gold-mine,
till he got it into the sunshine, and then it was only a white stone, what
he called a "chucky--stane;" but he kept hoping for better luck next
time. In the height of summer, when the streams were very low, he and

the shepherd's boys would build dams of stones and turf across a
narrow part of the burn, while Jean sat and watched them on a little
round knoll. Then, when plenty of water had collected in the pool, they
would break the dam and let it all run downhill in a little flood; they
called it a "hurly gush." And in winter they would slide on the black,