Then he stopped, for Lady Ker had swooned away. She was worn out with watching and with anxiety about Randal. Simon went and called the maids, and they brought water and wine, and soon Lady Ker came back to herself, with the little silver crucifix in her hand. The old nurse was crying, and making a great noise. “The good folk have taken ma bairn,” she said, “this nicht o’ a’ the nichts in the year, when the fairy folk--preserve us frae them!---have power. But they could nae take the blessed rood o’ grace; it was beyond their strength. If gipsies, or robber folk frae the Debatable Land, had carried away the bairn, they would hae taken him, cross and a’. But the guid folk have gotten him, and Randal Ker will never, never mair come hame to bonny Fairnilee.” What the old nurse said was what everybody thought. Even Simon Grieve shook his head, and did not like it. But Lady Ker did not give up hope. She sent horsemen through all the country-side: up Tweed to the Crook, and to Talla; up Yarrow, past Catslack Tower, and on to the Loch of Saint Mary; up Ettrick to Thirlestane and Buccleugh, and over to Gala, and to Branxholme in Teviotdale; and even to Hermitage Castle, far away by Liddel water. They rode far and rode fast, and at every cottage and every tower they asked “had anyone seen a boy in green?” But nobody had seen Randal through all the country-side. Only a shepherd lad, on Foulshiels hill, had heard bells ringing in the night, and a sound of laughter go past him, like a breeze of wind over the heather. Days went by, and all the country, was out to look for Randal. Down in Yetholme they sought him, among the gipsies; and across the Eden in merry Carlisle; and through the Land Debatable, where the robber Armstrongs and Grahames lived; and far down Tweed, past Melrose, and up Jed water, far into the Cheviot hills. But there never came any word of Randal. He had vanished as if the earth had opened and swallowed him. Father Francis came from Melrose Abbey, and prayed with Lady Ker, and gave her all the comfort he could. He shook his head when he heard of the Wishing Well, but he said that no spirit of earth or air could have power for ever over a Christian soul. But, even when he spoke, he remembered that, once in seven years, the fairy folk have to pay a dreadful tax, one of themselves, to the King of a terrible country of Darkness; and what if they had stolen Randal, to pay the tax with _him!_ This was what troubled good Father Francis, though, like a wise man, he said nothing about it, and even put the thought away out of his own mind.