be humble and work
day in, day out, like other folk, and for that reason she never throve
in the world. She lived here and there, and did this and that. All the
town knew her; she was just 'Betty Lamb'; no one expected aught of her.

It was a small town in the west of Scotland. On different sides of it
long lanes of humble cottages straggled out into the fields; the
cottages had grey stone walls and red tiled roofs. There were new grey
churches in the town, and big buildings, and streets of shops. The
people in those days thought these very fine; they thought less about
the real glory of the town--a ruined abbey which stood upon an open
heath just beyond the houses.

Three walls, two high gothic windows with the slender mullions unbroken,
a few stately columns broken off at different heights from the ground,
and one fragment of the high arch of the nave standing up against the
sky in exquisite outline--these formed the ruin. It was built of the red
sandstone that in its age takes upon it a delicate bloom of pink and
white; it looked like a jewel in the breast of the grey hill country.
Furze grew within the ruin and for acres on all sides. Sheep and goats
came nibbling against the old altar steps. A fringe of wallflower and
grass grew upon the top of the highest arch and down the broken
fragments of the wall.

All around the stately hills looked down upon the town and the ruin, and
the sky that bent over was more often than not full of cloud, soft and
grey.

Betty Lamb was getting on to middle age, about thirty, when she had a
baby. They had put her again in the poorshouse, but she rose when her
baby was but a day old and went away from the place.

It was summer time then; the sky relented somewhat; there was sunshine
between the showers, and sometimes a long fair week of silvery weather,
when a white haze of lifting moisture rose ever, like incense, from the
hills, and the light shone white upon the yellow bloom of the furze.

Betty Lamb found the ambry niche in the wall of the ruin at the side of
the place where the altar had been. She laid her baby there. That was
his cradle, and by sunlight and moonlight she was heard singing loud
songs to him. The people were afraid of going too near her at that time.
'It is dangerous,' said they, 'to touch an animal when she has her young
with her.'

As years went on Betty Lamb and her little boy spent summer after summer
upon the moor. The child was not christened, unless