WE soon grow used to the greatest changes, and almost forget the things that we were accustomed to before. In a day or two, Randal had nearly forgotten what a dull life he had lived in Fairyland, after he had touched his eyes with the strange water in the fairy bottle. He remembered the long, grey sands, and the cold mist, and the white faces of the strange people, and the gloomy queen, no more than you remember the dream you dreamed a week ago. But he did notice that Fairnilee was not the happy place it had been before he went away. Here, too, the faces were pinched and white, and the people looked hungry. And he missed many things that he remembered: the silver cups, and plates, and tankards. And the dinners were not like what they had been, but only a little thin soup, and some oatmeal cakes, and trout taken from the Tweed. The beef and ale of old times were not to be found, even in the houses of the richer people.

Very soon Randal heard all about the famine; you may be sure the old nurse was ready to tell him all the saddest stories.

“Full many a place in evil case Where joy was wont afore, oh! Wi’ Humes that dwell in Leader braes, And Scotts that dwell in Yarrow!”

And the old woman would croon her old prophecies, and tell them how Thomas the Rhymer, that lived in Ercildoune, had foretold all this. And she would wish they could find these hidden treasures that the rhymes were full of, and that maybe were lying—who knew?—quite near them on their own lands.

“Where is the Gold of Fairnilee?” she would cry; “and, oh, Randal! can you no dig for it, and find it, and buy corn out of England for the poor folk that are dying at your doors?

There it is, with the sun never glinting on it; there it may bide till the Judgment-day, and no man the better for it.

“I doubt it’s fairy gold, nurse,” said Randal, “and would all turn black when it saw the sun. It would just be like this bottle, the only thing I brought with me out of Fairyland.”

Then Randal put his hand in his velvet pouch, and brought out a curious small bottle.* It was shaped like this,

and was made of something that none of them had ever seen before. It was black, and you could see the light through it, and there were green and yellow spots and streaks on it.

“That ugly bottle looked like gold and diamonds when I found it in Fairyland,” said Randal, “and the water in it smelled as sweet as roses. But when I touched my eyes with it, a drop that ran into my mouth was as salt as the sea, and immediately everything changed: the gold bottle became this glass thing, and the fairies became like folk dead, and the sky grew grey, and all turned waste and ugly. That’s the way with fairy gold, nurse; and if you found it, even, it would all be dry leaves and black bits of coal before the sun set.”

“Maybe so, and maybe no,” said the old nurse. “The Gold o’ Fairnilee may no be fairy gold, but just wealth o’ this world that folk buried here lang syne. But noo, Randal, ma bairn, I maun gang out and see ma sister’s son’s dochter, that’s lying sair sick o’ the kincough* at Rink, and take her some of the physic that I gae you and Jean when you were bairns.”

So the old nurse went out, and Randal and Jean began to be sorry for the child she was going to visit. For they remembered the taste of the physic that the old nurse made by boiling the bark of elder-tree branches; and I remember it too, for it was the very nastiest thing that ever was tasted, and did nobody any good after all.

Then Randal and Jean walked out, strolling along without much noticing where they went, and talking about the pleasant days when they were children.