“Some say ‘Yes,’ and some say ‘No.’ There was Tarn Hislop, that vanished away the day before all the lads and your own father went forth to that weary war at Flodden, and the English, for once, by guile, won the day. Well, Tam Hislop, when the news came that all must arm and mount and ride, he could nowhere be found. It was as if the wind had carried him away. High and low they sought him, but there was his clothes and his jack,* and his sword and his spear, but no Tam Hislop. Well, no man heard more of him for seven whole years, not till last year, and then he came back: sore tired he looked, ay, and older than when he was lost. And I met him by the well, and I was frightened; and ‘Tam,’ I said, ‘where have ye been this weary time?’ ‘I have been with them that I will not speak the name-of,’ says he. ‘Ye mean the good folk,’ said I. ‘Ye have said it,’ says he. Then I went up to the house, with my heart in my mouth, and I met Simon Grieve. ‘Simon,’ I says, ‘here’s Tam Hislop come home from the good folk.’ ‘I ‘ll soon send him back to them,’ says he. And he takes a great rung** and lays it about Tarn’s shoulders, calling him coward loon, that ran away from the fighting. And since then Tam has never been seen about the place. But the Laird’s man, of Gala, knows them that say he was in Perth the last seven years, and not in Fairyland at all. But it was Fairyland he told me, and he would not lie to his own mother’s half-brother’s cousin.” * Jack, a kind of breastplate. ** Rung, a staff. Randal did not care much for the story of Tam Hislop. A fellow who would let old Simon Grieve beat him could not be worthy of the Fairy Queen. Randal was about thirteen now, a tall boy, with dark eyes, black hair, a brown face with the red on his cheeks. He had grown up in a country where everything was magical and haunted; where fairy knights rode on the leas after dark, and challenged men to battle. Every castle had its tale of Redcap, the sly spirit, or of the woman of the hairy hand. Every old mound was thought to cover hidden gold. And all was so lonely; the green hills rolling between river and river, with no men on them, nothing but sheep, and grouse, and plover. No wonder that Randal lived in a kind of dream. He would lie and watch the long grass till it locked like a forest, and he thought he could see elves dancing between the green grass stems, that were like fairy trees. He kept wishing that he, too, might meet the Fairy Queen, and be taken into that other world where everything was beautiful. [Illustration: Chapter Six] CHAPTER VI.--_The Wishing Well_ “JEAN,” said Randal one midsummer day, “I am going to the Wishing Well.” “Oh, Randal,” said Jean, “it is so far away!” “I can walk it,” said Randal, “and you must come, too; I want you, Jeanie. It ‘s not so very far.” “But mother says it is wrong to go to Wishing Wells,” Jean answered. “Why is it wrong?” said Randal, switching at the tall foxgloves with a stick.