“I am a kindly Scot,” I said in our own tongue, “of your own country.  Give me water.”  And then a dwawm, as we call it, or fainting-fit, came over me.

When I knew myself again, I was lying with my head in a maiden’s lap, and well I could have believed that the fairies had carried me to their own land, as has befallen many, whereof some have returned to earth with the tale, and some go yet in that unearthly company.

“Gentle demoiselle, are you the gracious Queen of Faerie?” I asked, as one half-wakened, not knowing what I said.  Indeed this lady was clad all in the fairy green, and her eyes were as blue as the sky above her head, and the long yellow locks on her shoulders were shining like the sun.

“Father, he is not dead,” she said, laughing as sweet as all the singing-birds in March—­“he is not dead, but sorely wandering in his mind when he takes Elliot Hume for the Fairy Queen.”

“Faith, he might have made a worse guess,” cried the man.  “But now, sir, now that your bonds are cut, I see nothing better for you than a well-washed face, for, indeed, you are by ordinary ‘kenspeckle,’ and no company for maids.”

With that he brought some water from the burn by the road, and therewith he wiped my face, first giving me to drink.  When I had drunk, the maid whom he called Elliot got up, her face very rosy, and they set my back against a tree, which I was right sorry for, as indeed I was now clean out of fairyland and back in this troublesome world.  The horses stood by us, tethered to trees, and browsed on the budding branches.

“And now, maybe,” he said, speaking in the kindly Scots, that was like music in my ear—­“now, maybe, you will tell us who you are, and how you came into this jeopardy.”

I told him, shortly, that I was a Scot of Fife; whereto he answered that my speech was strangely English.  On this matter I satisfied him with the truth, namely, that my mother was of England.  I gave my name but not that of our lands, and showed him how I had been wandering north, to take service with the Dauphin, when I was set upon, and robbed and bound by thieves, for I had no clearness as to telling him all my tale, and no desire to claim acquaintance with Brother Thomas.

“And the jackanapes?” he asked, whereto I had no better answer than that I had seen the beast with a wandering violer on the day before, and that she having lost it, as I supposed, it had come to me in the night.

The girl was standing with the creature in her arms, feeding it with pieces of comfits from a pouch fastened at her girdle.

“The little beast is not mine to give,” I went on, seeing how she had an affection to the ape, “but till the owner claims it, it is all the ransom I have to pay for my life, and I would fain see it wear the colours of this gentle maid who saved me.  It has many pretty tricks, but though to-day I be a beggar, I trow she will not let it practise that ill trick of begging.”