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, indeed, the dew falling from the sacred stones and the pity of God for fatherless innocents had christened him.  In this world, at least, his name was written in no book of life, for he had no name.

He grew to be a little lithe lad.  Then it was that in every pickle of mischief where a little lad could be this elf-child, with his black eyes and curly auburn hair, was to be found.  So maddening 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 right to live.  Yet it was more often in word than in deed that punishment of any sort was inflicted, for the preliminary stage was perforce, ‘first catch your boy,’ and that was far from easy.

Even when the catching was accomplished the beating did not always come.  One day the minister of the Kirk looked out upon his glebe.  His favourite cow, with a bridle in her mouth, was being galloped at greatest speed around the field, Betty’s lad standing tip-toe upon her back.  The minister, with the agility which unbounded wrath gave him, caught the boy’ and swung his cane.

‘I am going to thrash you,’ said he.

‘Ay, ye maun do that.’  The small face was drawn to the aspect of a grave judge—­’ye maun do that; it’s yer juty.’

The minister, who had looked upon his intention rather in the light of natural impulse, felt the less inclination for the task.  ’Are you not afraid of being beaten?’ he asked.

’Aweel’—­an air of profound reflection—­’I’m thinking I can even it ony day wi’ ridin’ on a coo’s back when she’ll rin like yon.’

The sunlight of habitual benevolence began to break through the cloud of wrath upon the good minister’s face.  ’If I let you off, laddie, what will you do for me in return?’

An answering gleam of generosity broke upon the sage face of the child.  ‘I’ll fair teach ye how to dae’t ye’sel’.’

The lad grew apace.  The neighbours said that he showed ‘a caring’ for his mother, but no one held toward him a helping hand.  They were so sure that no good could come of him or of her.  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, and disappeared for the moment, so now it seemed that he had slipped from the grasp of the town, run quickly and disappeared.  No one knew why he had gone, or whither, or to what end.