om the circumstances of her own degradation and accepted his
glory as her own.

They said (the townsfolk said) that Betty Lamb had not lacked
opportunity. Ah well, God knows better than we what to each soul may be
its opportunity.

Betty Lamb watched her son in his perilous upward flight, and, for the
first time in her life, prayed that Heaven would forgive her misdeeds.
By some inborn instinct she assumed that it was this prayer she must
pray in order to obtain that desire of her eyes, his safety. When he
reached the highest swing, when he made his leap from that awful height
and caught the lower rope, there had come a change in Betty Lamb's soul.
It had seemed hours, nay, years to her, the space of time in which he
was swinging himself up and leaping down. Perhaps, half-witted as she
had been, this was in reality her life, not the other that for sixty
years she had been visibly living. She saw that his eye was fixed upon
her; she knew that the kisses were thrown to her. She rose and walked
erect, in her heart a new sense of responsibility and of the value of
life.

Next day in Betty Lamb's cellar-room a shadow darkened the doorway, and
her son stood before her. He did not kiss her--that had not been their
way, even when he was an infant and she had sung her songs to him in the
lonely ruin--but he bowed to her with all the foreign graces that he had
learned, just as if she were one of the queens before whom he had
performed. She feasted her eyes upon him.

He looked round upon the cellar. 'You must not live here any longer,'
said he.

For the first time in her life humility reigned in her heart and she
resigned her gypsy freedom. 'I'm thinking,' she replied modestly, 'that
it's nae fit for the mither of sich as ye are noo.'

With the minister Lambetti left money that would defray the expenses of
a decent habitation for his mother, and, to the wonder of all, from that
day forth the mother lived in it decently. She was even charitable with
her little store; she was even known to raise the fallen.

When she was dead Lambetti was dead too. He had lived his life fast,
and, if gold be of worth, it seemed as if he had lived it to some
purpose. Lambetti left money to the town, money for two purposes which
in due time the long-headed townsmen carried into effect. An asylum was
built upon the moor; it is called 'Betty Lamb's Home for the Young and
the Aged.' The old Abbey also was walled in; lawns and flower beds were
s