Many a Tear by M.P. Shiel — Read

-"God counts a woman's tears."--THE TALMUD

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; for I say that if ever the arm of the Almighty bared itself to be known openly in the affairs of men, it was in that life. There, like a pine blighted by the lightning's wrath, sits Margaret now, a living pledge of that Power which governs the world."