Matthew Phipps Shiel

“ At any rate, through him, the condition of Margaret may shortly be expected to undergo a change, though it is not easy to rescue her—she resists, appears to be suspicious, can't now believe perhaps that anyone really wishes her well—and whether she is capable of being reclaimed from her half-savage state it is hard to say: for the years alter us all, sir, the years leave the marks of their passing upon us.
So much Mr. Somerset, the aged clergyman, was able to give me of the story of Margaret Higgs, and that morose star of hers ”

“ The baker's cart ceased to wait at Woodside farm, the butcher declined to deal; even so far off as St. Bride's and the Forest of Dean, Margaret Higgs could neither sell her starved calf nor get meal for her pig, nor find a forgiving smile."
"Her's done away wi'n right enough," was the word everywhere: "hanging be too good for she, and shame ought to cover the face of the police." Passing by the farm one morning, I walked up the garden-path, and saw Margaret. ”

“ Higgs, do you propose to live, to manage the farm?" I asked.
"I did live and find bread for the boy before, and I'll do it again, sir," she answered.
"But for one to defy many is up-hill work, and you without a protector now," I said..."Tell me the truth, Margaret," I added, "is Higgs dead?" ”

“ But what struck me from the first was the nervousness of one of the justices, the lord of Glanna—a short-built and broad-faced man, with cropped hair, and squat fingers, with which he kept tapping on his chin, tapping on his chair, tapping ever on everything near him. ”

“ Once she was sent to prison, when, ever unlucky, on happening to throw a stone at a throng of boys, the stone cut one of them, and the magistrates gave her their "go to Gloucester for a month." One of these magistrates, by the way, was none other than her stepson, Fred Higgs, who had been taken up by some mysterious business man—in Glasgow they say it was—had graduated at Oxford, and is now, you may say, one of our magnates. The man has simply ignored his stepmother's existence. ”

“ I first heard the name of Margaret Higgs one gloomy afternoon, when passing over the Chase by Tydenham, with Severn (they don't say "the" Severn there) trailing itself away through a vale of haze far down on my right. The aged clergyman I was making the journey with showed me the mass of rags and grey locks, where the woman sat alone on a rock on the Chase, saying to me—"Mark that woman, a remarkable being, I assure you, a woman who during sixteen years has plumbed even the deeps of human woe ”