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.
“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.
“Oh, she says it is a wicked thing, and forbidden by the Church. People who go to wish there, sacrifice to the spirits of the well; and Father Francis told her that it was very wrong.”
“Father Francis is a shaveling,” said Randal. “I heard Simon Grieve say so.”
“I don’t know: a man that does not fight, I think. I don’t care what a shaveling says: so I mean just to go and wish, and I won’t sacrifice anything. There can’t be any harm in _that!_”
“But, oh Randal, you’ve got your green doublet on!”
“Do you not know it angers the fair--I mean the good folk,--that anyone should wear green on the hill but themselves?”
“I cannot help it,” said Randal. “If I go in and change my doublet, they will ask what I do that for. I ‘ll chance it, green or grey, and wish my wish for all that.”
“I ‘m going to wish to meet the Fairy Queen! Just think how beautiful she must be! dressed all in green, with gold bells on her bridle, and riding a white horse shod with gold! I think I see her galloping through the woods and out across the hill, over the heather.’