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. At length, when Elspat became
totally unable (in appearance at least) to turn
herself on the wretched settle which served her
for a couch, the humanity of Mr Tyrie's successor
sent two women to attend upon the last moments
of the solitary, which could not, it was judged, be
far distant, and to avert the possibility that she
might perish for want of assistance or food, before
she sunk under the effects of extreme age, or
mortal malady.
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