242 THE GOLD OF FAIRNILEE.

 

‘Where has he gone?” said Lady Ker, ina
strange voice.

- “He went away out of sight,” said Randal.
“T 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 Sep-
tember, 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