up the fortune already in her grasp. There is a tendency in the book toward exaggeration, verging upon religious sentimentality, yet, taken as a whole, it is a careful piece of work that succeeds in holding the reader's interest.

A book which comes exasperatingly near to being a worthy piece of work is

"Salvator"

Salvator, by Percival Gibbon. The author had all the material for a story at once dramatic, instructive and full of popular appeal, and he has just missed his goal through sheer lack of technical skill. He starts with the advantage of a picturesque and unhackneyed setting, the island of Mozambique-a setting which, for the moment, we do not remember to have come across in any novel other than Dolf Wyllarde's Uriah, the Hittite. He has made us see the life on the island, with its motley hordes of negroes, Portuguese, and the scum and riff-raff of all the nations of Europe as a sort of hotbed of treachery and crime, a filthy breeding place of corruption and treason. He has conceived the idea of flinging into the midst of this political anarchy a dreamer, a quixotic and visionary reformer, a man of mixed blood combining the obstinacy of the AngloSaxon with the sentimentality of the German. This man Salvator undertakes single-handed, and with the courage of a colossal ignorance, to clean up the government of the island, to effect a reform that does not hesitate at a revolution, to make himself, if need be, the dictator-not for personal gain, but in a spirit of self-sacrifice. This theme might be handled a dozen different ways. It is rich in possibilities of satire, of burlesque, of grim tragedy-and, of course, it can end only in one way, the defeat and annihilation of the would-be reformer. But no matter in what key the author chooses to write it, the essential thing is to keep Salvator in the centre of the picture; to make us see behind him, and surrounding him, and hedging him in, an intricate network of conspiracy, a secret, remorseless invincible treachery; to give us everywhere the impression of lurking dangers, hidden ambuscades, smiling hypocrisy; to let us

see, in all its details, the drama of a gigantic fiasco. The reason why Salvator is a book full of interesting promise is that at times it almost achieves some of these results. The reason why it is nothing more than a book of promise is because it injects into the central plot a number of irrelevant and unimportant side issues, a quantity of characters who do not really count, a young Englishwoman who does not know her own mind for two consecutive chapters, and a young Englishman who is held up as a model of courtesy to men and chivalry to women when, as a matter of fact, he is neither the one thing nor the otherand even if he were, has no right, according to the accepted principles of technique, actually to elbow the hero more than once out of the centre of the story. And yet the chances are that, because of some clever writing and novel situations, the popular verdict will place Salvator distinctly higher than it deserves.

"PeterPeter"

A story which, in sharp contrast to Salvator, contains no possibilities for making anything better or cleverer than the author has made is PeterPeter, by Maude Radford Warren. It is a book carefully and successfully written, with the purpose of satisfying a quite legitimate popular demand for stories of the fluffy, harmless sort, depicting, with a certain tender lightness of touch, a highly idealised variety of love in a cottage, where nothing happens as it does. in real life-where tempers are never ruffled, adversity never brings discouragement, and friends are always loyal, and babies are impossibly cherubic. In short, Peter-Peter is the history of a young married couple who, having been bred in luxury, suddenly find their entire fortune swept away, and retire to the only refuge left them, a tumble-down barn on the farm which was the husband's birthplace. Here, for a year, they struggle blithely with poverty. Here

for a while he does the cooking and dish-washing, while she gives lessons in French and music. Here the twins are born, and inspire the father to write wonderful verses about them, and to draw marvellously varied pictures of

babyhood in all its phases, and here they are still living when the joyful news comes that the quaint and inimitable book made from these pictures and verses has caught the public taste and become the foundation stone of a new fortune. Such is Peter-Peter, a book destined to a popularity quite beyond its real merit, a book that with all its tenderness, its humour, its reverence of home and love and motherhood, remains, when all is said, essentially and preposterously unreal.

"The Whips of Time"

The Whips of Time, by Arabella Kenealy, belongs to the class of books that make no pretensions to high literary value, and are accepted at their face value by the general public, whose verdict is therefore just about commensurate with their real worth. In other words, it is a story written frankly not as a study of life or of character, but solely for the sake of an exciting and original development of plot-the sort of story which in its highest development is exemplified by James Payne and Wilkie Collins. The Whips of Time takes its start from a heartless experiment by an English physician for the purpose of deciding the vexed question of the part played by heredity in the development of character. The physician in question is a disbeliever in heredity, and he proposes to make a test by secretly exchanging two babies born at the same time in a private sanitarium-one of them the child of the leading family of a small English town, the other the child of a condemned murderess who has confessed to having poisoned a score of victims. The story opens twenty years later than the prelude, and is through the eyes of another physician who shared the confidence of the doctor responsible for the exchange, but has never known the details of it. Coming for a season to the small town in question, the doctor discovers that instead of one there are two leading families, and in each of them there is a son and heir born by curious coincidence in his friend's sanitarium, and at about the same time that the child of the murderess was born. One or the other of

seen

these two young men, so the physician assumes, somewhat hastily, must be the child of the murderess. The only problem to his mind is which of the two has the probable inheritance of a criminal nature. And as the story progresses; as we watch from day to day the lives of these two young men; see their hearts awakening and their interests definitely centring upon certain young women, we see them constantly through the eyes of this doctor, we hear constantly the insistent question, Which of these two is destined to make a woman miserable. It does not occur to the good doctor, and therefore it does not occur to us, that the sex of the murderess's child is one of the details which his brother practitioner never mentioned to him, and that is why the outcome of the story, when we finally get it, comes with the startling suddenness of the cracking of a whip.

"The Black Flier"

So long as the automobile fad endures, it is likely that almost any story in which the characters are hurled madly through town and country at law-breaking speed, undergoing adventures that defy all rules of probability, will receive a favourable verdict from the general public. The Black Flier, by Edith Macvane, adds one more to the already lengthy list. As for the likelihood of the incidents which in this particular case are supposed to have happened to the man and woman mainly concerned, the simplest method is to detail them briefly and without comment, leaving the reader to judge for himself. A young American, about to marry an English girl at her own home, discovers half an hour before the appointed time that there is a blunder of names in the marriage license. He hastens across the fields by a short cut to the register's office, has an ugly fall in attempting to jump a hedge, and lands in the road, his wedding garments in ruins and his leg crippled from an ugly twist. An approaching motor car seems. to solve his difficulty. At a signal it stops, a young woman, addressing him in French, assists him to his feet and into the car, then puts on full speed, and in spite of all his expostulations, drives

blindly onward until at nightfall they stop at a strange and isolated inn just over the Scottish border. This unaccountable young woman who has thus kidnapped him enters their names as husband and wife, and the man, not wishing to expose her to scandal, and unversed in Scottish law, refrains from contradicting her. Who and what she is he is not told; but he gathers that she is fleeing from some great danger; and her youth and beauty awake his chivalry and sympathy. The next morning he discovers that the lady has flown, her pursuers having overtaken her and spirited her away. He himself is left with her motor car on his hands, and is promptly arrested on the charge of having stolen it. Within twenty-four hours, Fate has willed it that he should desert a bride at the altar, elope with a strange woman, be charged with a felony and under Scottish law have presumably and quite against his will contracted a marriage. To contrive an explanation of these various happenings, and an escape from their consequences that will satisfy even the rudimentary demands of plausibility, is a task that might well dismay even a veteran concocter of mystery stories, and probably few could do much better than Edith Macvane has succeeded in doing. Nevertheless, the book does not carry conviction with it; we know all the time that things don't and couldn't have happened that way for the simple and all sufficient reason, to quote the immortal words of Assessor Brack, "People don't do such things!" Nevertheless, The Black Flier is destined to be widely read and popularly enjoyed, because it does give an exhilarating illusion of the rush and swirl of a mad flight, the breathless onward plunge through space, the fascination of limitless and lawless speed.

"The Half Moon"

The Half Moon, by Ford Madox Hueffer, belongs to that better sort of historical novel that refuses to purchase popularity at the cost of honest narrative and careful style. The date of the story is in the early years of the reign of King James the first. The scene of action for the English portion of the story is the town of Rye, one of the Cinque ports which had, till then, their own laws, rights and nobility, quite apart from those of the rest of England; and for the rest of the book, the action takes places on board the Half Moon, the ship in which Hendrick Hudson first came to the Island of Manhattan. It is, however, in no sense a colonial novel, for the plot concerns a certain Edward Coleman who, contrary to English law, has been exporting wool to Holland. He is betrayed by Anne Jeal, daughter of the mayor of Rye, out of revenge because he has scorned her beauty, and has chosen to marry a Dutch woman. Coleman, with the death penalty hanging over him, flees to Holland, and thence ships with Hudson to the New World, where, as tradition tells us, he was the first white man to die in the new Dutch colony. In itself the plot sounds thin and unpromising, but it has been used by Mr. Hueffer as the framework for a careful and very vivid picture of seventeenth-century bigotry, ignorance, and superstition; of the final struggle between mediævalism and modernity; and of the desperate lengths to which a proud, powerful, and undisciplined \woman will go in her attempt to avenge the wrongs of her slighted beauty. It is a pity that there are not more stories of the historical novel class written in this same careful and conscientious way.

Frederic Taber Cooper.

CHAPTER IX

HE door between the

orangery-which gave its Ename to the house-and the inner drawing-room was open, a fact Coralie was not aware of until the sound of voices reached her in her retreat among the fragrant trees. She had discovered this haven with all the joy of the Southerner finding a bit of home in a far-off land. The breath of the blossoms, the warmth of the atmosphere, the feeling of the rocking-chair under her lissom body, of the tiles under her feet, brought her back to her childhood and its early surroundings with a rush of that joy tinged with pathos with which a happy woman can afford to look back upon her happy past. In lazy luxuriance she rocked herself and dreamed, a smile on her lips, and almost, but not quite, a tear in her eye.

"My! those were good days, too," she said to herself. "I'll have to make Ernest take me back to the old folk before long." Then, instead of the past, she began to consider the future-how mother would look when she saw her child again, and how proud the child would be to show the mother to the husband . . .! If ever there was a lovely womanInto this agreeable day-dream certain voices penetrated, at first vaguely, then so insistently, almost disagreeably, that Coralie ceased rocking herself to listen. Those were Norah's tones, uplifted, shrill, furiously complaining.

Good heavens! the girl was crying! And the other voice-that sweet, false, insinuating note-well she ought to know it by this time; how many an hour it had exasperated her almost beyond endurance during the last year . . . ! What mischief was Emerald Fanny concocting now?

"I'm going to listen," said Coralie determinedly to herself, clenching her hand.

"I stole on the highway yesterday; I'm not going to be squeamish about a trifle of eavesdropping to-day. Every one sees his duty in his own way. I hope I know mine when I meet it."

So, virtuously, she listened.

"I won't stand it !" Norah was sobbing. "Mamma has no right to interfere with my life. I know she said something to Enn in order to put him off coming any more. He used to be always dead keen on having me with him."

"I am sure he was," insinuated the sweet voice.

"He did care for me," the passionate complaint proceeded. "Why, he would hardly let a day pass without coming up on some pretext or other, or writing, or 'phoning. He did care for me."

"Indeed he was watching you with his eyes the whole time. I saw him, little Norah, that first night."

"And mamma is going to spoil all; to break my heart and ruin my life! Mamma always wants to manage everybody. body. She said she wouldn't have me going out with him any more; that I was too old for that sort of thing . . . and in the same breath she tells me that I'm a school-girl. I feel sure she said something beastly to him and hurt his feelings. Enn has got those kinds of feelings."

"Oh, it would be such a pity," sighed the widow. "People do make such dreadful mischief without meaning it! If mothers would only understand that their daughters grow up!" Emerald's voice took an even more delicate silkiness. "You must try and make allowances for your dear mother, darling. It is hard on a young-looking and handsome woman to have a grown-up daughter."

"Oh, the cat, the cat!" cried Coralie to herself in burning indignation, and almost burst from her eavesdropping seclusion to fulminate the mischiefmaker. But she restrained herself; she waited for Norah's outcry. Surely the girl, however deep under the spell of the

flatterer, would rebuke this slanderer as she deserved.

But Norah's answer was delayed. Coralie could hear her blowing her nose and sniffing-and when it came it was anything but satisfactory to the listener's conception of loyalty.

"I don't think it's that," the injured young lady was remarking sullenly. “I don't think mamma is that sort of woman."

"My dear"-Mrs. Lancelot's tone was arch-"she might very well not want to be a grandmother yet."

"No," cried Norah, "no, that's not mamma's way!" There was a pettish stamp of her foot. "That's not mamma's way a bit. I declare if that were her reason there would be some sense in it. I could understand it. But mamma has never hardly let me have a thought of my own since I was born. She's watched and watched and watched me. She thinks she'll manage my whole life. But I'll not stand it. She has never understood me, never. No one has ever understood me except Enn." An angry sob caught the word.

"And your Emerald!"

"Oh, yes. Yes, you do, Emerald."

"Alas," chanted the widow, "how very, very often mothers who love their children best least understand them. I often think"-the sound of tears trickled into the musical accents-"that if I had only had a little child how different my life would be; how I should pray to do right by it, to be guided! How I should subordinate my every thought and wish! A child's individuality is such a precious, precious thing! Oh, Norah, if a child of mine had wept tears like yours through my fault I should never forgive myselfI think my heart would be broken!"

Norah seemed to be less amenable than usual to her friend's pathos, for all the response this affecting speech produced was the peevish remark:

"Meanwhile it's my it's my heart that's broken."

"Norah is becoming an odious young female," thought Coralie, "and the sooner Gertrude bundles out the widow the better it will be."

Yet she could not help feeling a sneaking pity for the girl. If it were true that

Gertrude had banished Enniscorthy because of her daughter's youth, while the boy and girl really cared for each other, it was a little hard on them; and, as the American shrewdly told herself, something of a mistake besides. The child ought to have her chance. As Mrs. Jamieson mused she was startled to hear Emerald Lancelot put the very idea into words.

"You shan't break your heart, my darling; you shall have your chance. You shall speak with your Enn this very day, this very moment."

"What do you mean?" The girl's voice rang out, eager, through a certain note of doubt.

"What's his 'phone number?" "Three six, Windsor. But what are you going to do?"

"Oh, let me manage for you, my beloved child!"

"Emerald, you don't know him well enough to ring him up. And I-I couldn't. He never answered my letter."

"My darling, cannot you trust me?”

Coralie drew a few steps nearer the drawing-room door, that she might peep as well as listen. This was becoming extremely exciting.

She heard the click of the telephone, and then Emerald deliver herself with precision: "Is this the Cavalry Barracks? Is Lord Enniscorthy in?Will you kindly tell him to come and speak to me?-Oh, is that you, Lord Enniscorthy? No-" with a return of dulcet archness, "I need not give you my name. I'm speaking for Norah Esdale. You rang her up a little while ago, didn't you?-Hold on."

Emerald here apparently left the telephone, and Coralie rejoiced at the sound of Norah's furious protest: "Emerald, what have you done!-How could you? How could you?"—Then came the other's voice again: "Oh, don't be a goose! Take your chance, quick, quick," responded the artful widow, giggling softly. And before the eavesdropper, outraged in every instinct of good taste, had time to interfere, Norah was already at the telephone, unable to resist the double pressure of her friend's urging and her own undisciplined desire.