310 THE GOLD OF FAIRNILEE.

 

purple, gold, and green; and one of these fell,
and broke into a thousand pieces, for it was of
some strange kind of glass. There were three
gold sword-hilts, carved wonderfully into the
figures of strange beasts with wings, and heads
like lions.

Randal and Jean looked at it and marvelled,
and Jean sang in a low, sweet voice:

‘“ Between the Camp o’ Rink
And Tweed water clear, .
Lie nine kings’ ransoms
For nine hundred year.”

Nobody ever saw so much treasure in all broad
Scotland.

Jean and Randal passed the rest of the night
in hiding what they had found. Part they hid
in the secret chamber of Fairnilee, of which
only Jean and Lady Ker and Randal knew the
secret. The rest they stowed away in various
places. Then Randal filled the earth into the
trench, and cast wood on the place, and set
fire to the wood, so that next day there was
nothing there but ashes and charred earth.

You will not need to be told what Randal did,
now that he had treasure in plenty. Some he
sold in France, to the king, Henry II., and
some in Rome, to the Pope; and with the
money which they gave him he bought corn
and cattle in England, enough to feed all his