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Scott, Walter, Sir, 1771-1832

"Chronicles of the Canongate"

"
She kept her word. From that day the world was to her a
wilderness, in which she remained without thought, care, or
interest, absorbed in her own grief, indifferent to every thing
else.
With her mode of life, or rather of existence, the reader is
already as far acquainted as I have the power of making him. Of
her death, I can tell him nothing. It is supposed to have
happened several years after she had attracted the attention of
my excellent friend Mrs. Bethune Baliol. Her benevolence, which
was never satisfied with dropping a sentimental tear, when there
was room for the operation of effective charity, induced her to
make various attempts to alleviate the condition of this most
wretched woman. But all her exertions could only render Elspat's
means of subsistence less precarious--a circumstance which,
though generally interesting even to the most wretched outcasts,
seemed to her a matter of total indifference. Every attempt to
place any person in her hut to take charge of her miscarried,
through the extreme resentment with which she regarded all
intrusion on her solitude, or by the timidity of those who had
been pitched upon to be inmates with the terrible Woman of the
Tree.


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