A Dozen Ways Of Love

in the work-house; after that she belonged to no one. Her mind was a little astray: she had strong, rude, strange ideas of her own; she would not be humble and work day in, day out, like o

d 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 day

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 gre

town and the ruin, and the sky that bent over wa

had a baby. They had put her again in the poorshouse, but she ro

d sometimes a long fair week of silvery weather, when a white haze of lifting moisture rose ev

aby there. That was his cradle, and by sunlight and moonlight she was heard singing loud songs to him. The people were afr

hristened, unless, indeed, the dew falling from the sacred stones and the pity of God for fatherless innoce

ening indeed were his naughty tricks that the townspeople spoke not so often of beating him, as they would have beaten a human child, but of wringing his neck like a young thing that had no

glebe. His favourite cow, with a bridle in her mouth, was being galloped at greatest speed around the field, Betty's lad sta

to thrash yo

was drawn to the aspect of a grave j

the light of natural impulse, felt the less inclination fo

thinking I can even it ony day wi' ridin'

gh the cloud of wrath upon the good minister's face. 'If

upon the sage face of the child. 'I'l

er. The mother had taken to drink, and one day it was found that the lad was gone. Just as he had often slipped from the grasp of one or other of the angry townsmen, dodged, darted,

o longer serve her, she was seen to go about from door to door in the early dawn, raking among the ashes for such articles as she chose to put in an old sack and carry upon

o stood and stared, their little hearts made glad by novelty and colour. Great was the surprise of the older folk, who said, 'It is a new thing in the world when so great a show as this come

etti. Very foreign was the curl of his hair and the waxen ends of his moustache; very magnificent was his physique

wore silken furbelows and fringed shawls. The minister paid for the best seats for them to sit in. All the shopkeepers were there; every man, woman and child in all the town who could find as much as sixpence to pay for standing room was there. But the strangest circumstance was that before the show be

who rode standing tip-toe on the backs of horses and jumped through swinging rings. But the crowd had not read the circus bills and the newspapers from all the neighbouring cities for nothing. They were a canny Scotch crowd; they were not to be taken in by mere

yond doubt from foreign parts. He was indeed a most grand and handsome gentleman. His dress was, if anything, more superb than it had been in the pictures;

h to balance himself and in the other hand a cup of tea which he drank in the very middle of his walk;

ly out of relief for the safety of the performer. 'Ay me,' they said to one another, 'did ye ever see t

hat he was now going to perform a feat which was so difficult and dangerous that hitherto he had kept it solely for the benefit of crowned heads, before whom on many occasions he had had the p

tand allotted to them. 'Ay me, but he's grond'; and all the rest of the townsfolk said the same to themselves

'The Signor' announced that he was going to swing himself up upon these hanging bars until he reached the topmost, and from that he

going to do made the crowd draw br

e grace, raising each trapeze with the force of

g progress. The little boys had not breath left now even to say

strange man performing a strange feat; one poor woman present saw a different

ful days. Her eyes, bleared and sunken, had descried her son; her mother's heart, mad though all pronounced her to be, had vibrated to the first sound of her son's vo

glare of lamps and the wearing of shining clothes, the shout of a thousand voices in applause, the glance of a thousand eyes in admiration, and the renown that spreads into the newspapers? In the mind of Betty Lamb there was no room for gr

not lacked opportunity. Ah well, God knows better

ched 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 h

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 fo

ellar. 'You must not live

she resigned her gypsy freedom. 'I'm thinking,' she replied mod

for his mother, and, to the wonder of all, from that day forth the mother lived in it dece

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