306 THE GOLD OF. FAIRNILEE.

 

slipped out into the moonlight. They took a
sack with them, and Randal carried a pickaxe
and a spade. They walked quickly to the three
great stones, and waited for a while to hear if
all was quiet. Then Jean threw a white cloak
round her, and stole about the edges of the
camp and the wood. She knew that if any
wandering man came by, he would not stay
long where such a figure was walking. The
night was cool, the dew lay on the deep fern ;
there was a sweet smell from the grass and
from the pine wood.

In the meantime, Randal was digging a long
trench with his pickaxe, above the place where
the old woman had knelt, as far as he could
remember it.

He worked very hard, and when he was in
the trench up to his knees, his pickaxe struck
against a stone. He dug round it with the
spade, and came to a layer of black burnt ashes
of bones. Beneath these, which he scraped
away, was the large flat stone on which his pick
had struck. It was a wide slab of red sand-
stone, and Randal soon saw that it was the lid
of a great stone coffin, such as the ploughshare
sometimes strikes against when men are plough-
ing the fields in the Border country.

Randal had seen these before, when he was
a boy, and he knew that there was never much
in them, except ashes and one or two rough
pots of burnt clay.