aid to him--

"Ah, Master Mat, it was the hunger did it; it was the hunger did it."

By a trick of memory Mat recollected that these were the words he had
heard on that day, long ago, when Betty had rescued Mary and himself
from the enraged bull.

One thing Mat had noticed as Betty Cunningham had passed; it was that
amid the wreck of her beauty one feature still remained as strangely
witching as ever. The soft eyes had not lost their delicacy of hue, nor
had the evil passions of her soul deprived them of their gentle look.
Those who mentioned her, and she was not an uncommon topic among the men
of the town, still spoke of Betty's beautiful eyes.

At last there came a temporary change in her fate. A branch of the Mary
Magdalene Asylum was established in Ballybay for the rescue of fallen
women, and she was one of the first to enter. But her temper, spoiled by
excesses and disappointment, fretted under the restraint. She quarrelled
with the nuns, and one night she fled. Then the revival in all its
fierce vigilance of the old spectre of eternal punishment made her more
infuriate than ever. She drank more deeply, cursed more fiercely, was
oftener in the police-cell, and Ballybay loathed her more than ever.

One morning--it was a Christmas morning--Mat was walking with his father
in the "Big Meadows." Snow had fallen heavily the night before; and as
they passed a bush, they saw the impress of a woman's form; it was
evident that an unhappy being had there spent her Christmas Eve.

"My God!" said Mat, "a woman has slept there."

Mat's father was the kindest and most humane being in all the world, but
"Serve the wretch right!" was his comment.

Her story wound up in a tragic climax. One night she made more violent
resistance than ever to the attempts of the police to arrest her, and
when she was at last captured, she was torn and bleeding. They put her
into a cell by herself; she could be heard pacing up and down with the
infuriate step of a caged tiger. The policeman on duty afterwards told
how he had heard her muttering to herself, and that he thought he caught
the words, "These eyes! These eyes! They have undone me! They have
undone me!" Soon afterwards he heard a wild, unearthly shriek that froze
his blood. He rushed into the cell, and there, horrible, bleeding....
But I dare not describe the sight.

* * * * *

Betty Cunningham was taken once more into the Mary Magdalene Asylum. Her