Two women and a lad came down the hill towards the stream on a frosty January evening at sunset.

It had been a good typical Christmas, and though the snow had partially disappeared, the river ran grey in the cold air, and the frost sparkled on the twigs of willows and on the brown stalks of tall water plants upon the banks.

The lad lounged easily along with his cap on the back of his head, his hands in his breeches pockets, and his pipe in his mouth; but the women bore burthens—one a bundle of brushwood on her head, the other a sack of potatoes—and as they reached the bridge they stopped to rest them awhile on its old brick parapet.

“’Old yer row, do!” the boy was saying. “What do it matter to you whether old Jeremiah ’ave a-turned me off agin or no? Ain’t I my own master?”

“Oh, ye’re yer own master safe enough,” retorted the woman, a sharp-featured body of middle age. “There ain’t nobody as ’ll worrit ’emselves much over ye now ye’ve put yer pore mother underground. If that’s what ye wanted when ye set to work to break ’er ’eart, why ye’ve got it.”

“Well, I want it now anyways,” retorted the lad with a brutal laugh.

“You’re an ungrateful beast, that’s what ye are!” said the woman shrilly. “I’d ’ave guv ye bite and sup for a night or two, for my pore sister’s sake, till ye got work again; but I shan’t now.”

“Nobody asted ye to!” laughed the lad. “When ye guv me a shake-down before ye said ye did it for ’er, but ye wanted my earnin’s all the same. And when I was turned off the farm ye turned me out in the road. I’d sooner shift for myself, thank ye!”

“Do it, then!” retorted the woman. “It looks like it, it do, and you sent adrift agin this very night! Lord, to think the devil o’ drink can get into a lad afore ’e’s forgot ’is mother’s milk!”

“If you don’t stop that jaw I’ll——” began the boy.

But the other woman laid a hand on his arm. She had a fresher, plumper, kindlier face than her neighbour, and she gave him a little friendly push as she whispered—

“There, now, there, she’s yer own mother’s sister ye know. You go ’ome.”

“Mother’s sister be damned,” said the lad irreverently. “She’s come that dodge over me long enough. She wouldn’t lift a finger to ’elp me, and I won’t ’ave no more of ’er preachments. I ain’t got no one to think of, and what I earns I’ll spend as I please.”

“A jolly lot you ever did hanything else,” began the aunt afresh, but the neighbour stopped her mouth.

“Now you go ’ome, Nat, you go on ’ome,” reiterated she to the boy; and “Can’t ye see as yer on’y aggrawatin’ the lad, Mary Ann?” she whispered to the woman. “Let ’im be, do! Maybe ’e misses his ’ome and his pore mother more than you thinks for.”

But Nat laughed as he blew the ashes from his pipe.

“Ye needn’t trouble to speak up for me, marm,” he sneered. “Lord, she don’t ’urt me, bless you,” and he snapped his fingers in the direction of his relative. “A precious sight I ever cared for the women-folk’s jaw. Oh, yes, I’ll go ’ome,” and something that somehow did not belong to the scowl flitted across the passionate young face that self-indulgence had so sorrowfully marred. “I’ll go ’ome! But where I goes there I bides—ye ’ear that? No one ain’t got no right to interfere wi’ me. I won’t never darken your doors no more, and if I’m a-goin’ to the devil I’ll go my own way.”

He stuck his cap on the back of his head again and his hands in his pockets, and lounged up the road singing a scrap of a low song in a louder voice than he could keep quite steady.

“It’s a pity, so it is,” murmured the stout woman, looking after him. “There was the makin’s of a nice lad in ’im once, I’ll be sworn.”

“You’re a new comer to the place,” retorted Mary Ann, “and that’s all you knows! If ’is pore mother didn’t fret the very guts out of ’erself a-tryin’ to bring ’im up respeckable! But the devil of ’is father were in ’im—that’s where it was. The low brute that man was! And died same as ’e lived. Found on the road—i’stead o’ dyin’ respeckable in ’is bed! As if ’e ’adn’t ha’ done the woman injury enough! Why—there was a Crowner’s inquest and all! But, Lor’, when all was said and done, I declare I niver spent a comfortabler ’alf hour than when I seed ’em nail ’im down! For, ye see, I says to myself: ‘Clara ’ll take on a bit, but she’s well rid on ’im. She can work to bring one up, and the boy ’ll soon be able to work for ’er.’ Lord, I didn’t reckon as ’e’d be a wuss devil nor ’is father, bad luck to ’im!”

“May be ’is pore mother spoiled ’im, being but the one, so to speak,” said the other half apologetically.

“Spoiled ’im!” laughed the other, preparing to shoulder her burthen again. “I reckon she did! Many’s the time I swore she’d be punished for it!”

“Well, I s’pose she was,” said the neighbour simply. “There, pore soul, I’m sorry for ’er.”

“’E broke ’er ’eart, ’e did, the young scoundrel,” growled Mary Ann, as she hitched the bundle of brushwood forward on to her back. “And I’m sure I ’ope he’ll break his own neck.”

“Oh, come, don’t say that,” murmured the gentler spirit reprovingly. “I dare say ’e’s lonesome enough anyways.”

“Lonesome!” sneered the incensed relative. “Much use ’e made of ’er company when ’e’d got it! Out on the roads, or what not, from night till morn and more! Didn’t ye ’ear ’im say precious little ’e cared for the women’s jaw? Precious little ’e did. Precious little ’e cared for aught about ’er, pore soul. Why, ’e was dead drunk the very day of ’er funeral!”

Mary Ann trudged forward as she spoke, hurling the words out against the wind under the penthouse of her burthen, and the sympathetic neighbour, standing behind her with her hands in her hips, shook her head sadly.

“That was bad,” she murmured, “that was bad, sure enough.”

Then she too turned to take up her load.

The potatoes were heavy; she failed to raise them on to her back at the first effort.

Just then the gate on to the railway line slammed to, and a girl coming down on to the bridge hurried forward and gave her a lift with them.

“Thank ye, thank ye,” said the woman. And when she had settled her burthen comfortably, glancing up to see who had helped her, she added again: “Oh, thank ye. Ye’re a stranger in the parish, ain’t ye?”

The girl blushed. She was pretty enough, but she was thin and pale, not to say wan, and her cotton dress was poor covering for the wintry day, and her ill-fitting black jacket and shabby straw hat betokened an even greater poverty than was usual in the village.

She blushed as one who knew the tone and the words, and was wont to understand beneath them the insinuation, “You’re a tramp.”

But she was mistaken. The woman before her prided herself on knowing a respectable female when she saw her, and though poor and miserable, the girl did not look “a bad ’un.”

“I’m a-goin’ on further,” said she evasively.

“Oh!” said the woman again. Then, as not wishing to be inquisitive, she added, “Well, thank ye. I wish ye a good evenin’. It’s cold weather; it’s best to walk fast to keep warm.”

And she nodded, moving on quickly to suit her action to her words.

“Good evenin’,” said the girl.

But she did not follow the advice.

Though she carried but the smallest of little bundles, she rested it on the brick parapet as the women had done with their heavier loads, and stood looking down the river into the afterglow.

It was four o’clock. The sun had set, and the poplars that crossed the stream and the fields, dividing meadow-land from water-cress grounds, shot straight arrows against a pale crimson sky, that was cool even in its fire in the cold, crisp air. Every little bare twig on the slender, bare boughs of the poplars pointed upwards; the willows by the river, though less spare and less commanding, modestly followed their example; the sky might have been constraining with its tender glory, but the girl—after one glance around on the clear-cut winter landscape, so calm with the patience of waiting Nature, but so cruelly silent with the dearth of stirring life—fastened her eyes on the water and on the water alone.

The long strings of half-dead, slimy weed that swayed idly to and fro, attached and yet floating, like the traveller’s joy on a summer’s day a-moving in the wind—or better, yes, much better still—like some dank, clinging cotton stuffs, held to the gravel bed by some heavy weight, yet erring softly, saturated with much water, on the bosom of the stream—these seemed to fascinate her beyond the power to tear away her gaze.

At last she shivered—the frost was intense—and lifted her head and sighed, a long, miserable, moaning sigh. Then she put her hand in her pocket and drew forth a letter—a letter and a thimble.

The moon, that had risen in time to see the sun go down, had just crept high enough in the sky to shine through the bare branches of the elms in the meadow beside the lower stream: it shone now upon the paper which the girl held trembling in her hand.

“Don’t ye come back here,” said the letter. “There ain’t no work to be got ’ere, and I’ve my hands full enough to keep them as are left.”

There was more, but she did not read it. She crushed the paper in her hands, and let it flutter slowly down into the water, but the thimble she put back into her pocket. Then she rested her two elbows on the brick parapet and leaned her head in them and cried softly to herself, still looking down into the darkening water as it lapped to and fro over the swaying body of weeds.

A bell sounded from the village on the hill; it cut clear and sharp across the frosty air; it was the bell from the straw-plaiting factory, sending the girls home from their day’s work. She knew it well enough, and roused herself at the sound, moving her hand to take up her little bundle once more. But in the waning light she pushed it forward instead of grasping it, and, in spite of a quick clutch, it slipped over the rounded edge of the parapet and fell with a thud into the river below. She gave a little cry as she followed it with her eyes, leaning over a long way to try and descry it in the green water beneath.

But there was nothing to be seen but the same swaying, dank body of weeds. And presently she gave a low, harsh laugh, and shrugged her shoulders, and pulling her miserable little black jacket across her chest, as though to persuade it to cling more closely to her frail, shivering body, she turned away and walked quickly up the by-path that led to the high road above.

Lights were burning in the cottage windows along the village street, and from the little straw factory on the left-hand side beside the Baptist chapel, the women were pouring forth into the road—some gay, some weary, some young, and some middle-aged, some hurrying to other duties at home, some loitering to chatter and chaff—most of them noisy, but all of them busy with work done and to do.

The girl watched them askance, drawing back under the shadow of the hedgerow, for the moon had not risen far enough yet to illumine the way, and the shadows had grown dark. When all had passed by or dispersed she moved out again, and stepped up to the door whence they had issued, and which still stood ajar on to the road.

She knocked at it and a woman appeared.

“What d’ye want?” said she.

Her tone was not unkind but it was sharp—the tone of a woman with her hands full of work, and no time for those who have theirs empty. The girl answered surlily.

“I want work,” she said.

“Well, there ain’t none to be ’ad ’ere.”

“I’m used to the straw-plaiting and shape-sewing too,” said the girl more humbly.

“Well, ye must go elsewhere. We’re full up ’ere,” said the woman, “and shall be for weeks, as far as I know. ’Ave ye got a reference?”

The girl nodded.

“Sort of, I s’pose,” said the woman shrewdly.

“I’ve got my character,” repeated the girl doggedly.

“Well, ye must take it elsewhere then,” said the woman again. “I’m sorry for ye. Good-night.”

And she shut the door quietly.

The girl turned away. She did not speak, nor even mutter, nor even sigh. But her wan little face was set and hard.

She looked down the road towards the open country, and up it where the cottages clustered, and she chose the forward way.

Wayfarers had almost cleared out of the village street, for it was quite dark now and bitterly cold; fires were burning and supper was preparing behind frosty windows and scanty window-curtains. Here and there a weary labourer or hurrying house-wife trudged past, but most people were indoors by now, most people were at home.

The girl walked on till she came near to the public-house near the village-end, where the signpost points separate fingers up the fork of the road.

There was a solitary lamp above the post-office hard by, and she stopped under it and put her hand in her pocket; the thimble and one halfpenny was all that she drew out, and she put them back again.

Then she looked behind her.

There was no one by, no one coming, and she crept stealthily up to the window of the “public,” and laid her face against the cold pane, gazing into the light and brightness and warmth within.

There were four or five men clustered round a table near the fire, and a few more standing at the bar with a couple of girls.

One of them at the table was singing in a loud voice; he was young—very young—and it was a good voice, and whatever were the words, the ditty seemed to please the company.

There was a roar of laughter every now and then, and whenever he stopped a cry of “Go on, Nat, go on, lad! That’s right,” and so forth.

The boy grew more and more excited, and the men cheered, and the girls clapped their hands and bent themselves double with laughter, and then the men laughed again till they coughed and choked with their merriment.

The song was funny, or the point lay in the youth of the singer.

And the girl outside listened.

Twice she crept to the door, twice had the knob in her hand to open and go in, and twice her pluck seemed to fail. The song stopped, there was a lull within; the warmth drew her as a magnet, and the third time she turned the handle. But she stood with the door ajar; for on a sudden there was a sound of chairs moved, of scuffling, of quick words and quick retorts within; the laughter was changed to angry altercation, words of which she could not catch the sense were flung to and fro, and all at once a man threw the door wide, and the lad who had been singing was suddenly flung forth into the road.

The girl started back at the first noise, then turned and fled into the darkness.

But the boy stood where they had hurled him, and the men slammed the door to again behind him.

There had been furious words in his mouth when he had made his ignominious exit, but they had died suddenly away as though frozen in his throat, and his limbs, that had struggled to deal revenge on his foes, had become paralyzed, his hot face had turned white with fear; he stood as one petrified, horror-struck, gazing after the thin cotton dress that flitted away in the gloom.

The clamour went on within, some angry, some grossly laughing, some striving to pacify.

The landlord had come down to the door, and after looking out through the glass, had half opened it and had glanced out. But the lad had drawn aside under the eaves.

“Why didn’t ’e keep ’is ’ands off what weren’t ’is?” one was saying angrily.

“’E’s gettin’ too cheeky by ’alf,” said another.

“Well, ’e shan’t come into my bar no more,” declared the landlord decisively, turning back into the room. “Many’s the time I’ve ’ad a mind to say so afore, when ’is pore mother used to come a-loiterin’ and waitin’ out there in the cold to try and fetch ’im ’ome. Mighty little ’e ever cared for ’er, nor anythin’ as she might ha’ said. But so long as ’e be’aved I ’adn’t the right to turn ’im out. ’E’s done for ’isself to-night though, and ’e don’t come in no more.”

“Good riddance too,” said one of the girls, settling her hair that had been loosened in the scuffle; and the landlord closed the door and drew the curtain across it.

But the lad outside made no effort to re-enter. He did not seem to have heard what had passed within his earshot.

He stood stock-still as they had left him, slowly rubbing his head with a trembling hand.

“Rot,” said he at last, to himself, with a feeble attempt at a laugh. “Ghosts! There ain’t no sich things as ghosts!”

Then he took a few steps forward, slowly and unsteadily, for he was drunk; not, however, in the direction of the village, and of his rough and lonely lodging, but between the hedges of the narrow lane beyond, where the figure had flitted before him.

Perhaps he had made a mistake; down that lane to the left stood the cottage, deserted now, where he had spent all the years of his life, alone—ever since he could remember—with the mother whom he had neglected and ill-treated, whom they all told him that he had killed.

The words buzzed wearily through his aching brain.

“Mighty little ’e ever cared for ’er, nor anythin’ as she might ha’ said!”

Yes, it was jolly true too!

And his own words, spoken an hour ago, echoed back again: “Precious little I ever cared for the women-folk’s jaw!”

It was as they said: he had killed her, and he had never cared for her, he had never mourned her, he had been drunk the day of her very funeral; he never missed her now.

He stumbled on. The winter twilight had faded long since, and the moon had slipped behind a cloud. The lane was quite dark, and he could no longer make out the swish of the white cotton skirt which he had fancied he had seen against the hedgerow. Nevertheless he stumbled on.

The old home lay close at hand; the well-known turning to it struck off here to the left. It stood in a field a little back from the road; there was an apple-tree in front of it and behind it, in the meadow that stretched down to the river, their cow used to feed in the days before his mother had had to sell her.

He stumbled on. Here, by the fence, she was wont to come down of a morning to see him off to work, of an evening to welcome him home, and—yes—often and often o’ night time to watch for him along the dark and lonely road, when he was coming home—as he was coming to-night—full of drink.

Home? Yes, it was home then, little as he had appreciated it.

He stopped at the fence, and steadied himself on its worn and worm-eaten bar.

The moonlight was leaking through the cloud again, and dimly lit the thatched roof of the cottage, whose blank windows and sealed door looked sadly across the field at him.

The latched gate was close to his hand: he opened it and went in, and the moon shone out more brightly.

The apple-tree was bare, the climbing blush rose and hardy canary-creeper on the porch were barren and leafless, the frost lay hard and crisp on the neglected garden path where he had often seen her watering the peonies and the sweet-william, or dressing the hollyhocks in some leisure moment. It was cold and lifeless now in the cold moonlight, but he saw it in sunlight and in summer, when the vegetables were green in the tiny plot of land, when the few sweet-peas scented the air, or when the apples were red on the tree.

He had never noticed any of it then, but now he was sure there had been sweet-peas and hollyhocks, and that he had seen his mother cutting the cabbages beyond them.

He scratched his head, he could not make himself out.

If it had been daylight no power would have led him to open that gate and steal into this forgotten corner, but even so he could not make himself out.

The cold air had been sobering him fast, but he told himself that he was drunk.

It was “jolly true enough” all that they had said: he hated his home, and had been in it as little as might be; he had broken his mother’s heart, and now that she was dead how could it be that he should either miss her or mourn her? Of course it could not be.

But still he lingered; the drink that was in him kept him warm, and he forgot the frost and saw the summer again.

And as he looked, the moon left the last of the cloud behind and shone out brilliantly; and there, beneath the apple-tree, he saw again the spare figure of medium height in the faded print gown, standing still as large as life.

His heart seemed to stop beating: there might be no such things as ghosts, but who was that figure standing there under the apple-tree?

It stirred now. Was it coming to meet him? He felt a cold sweat break out over his brow. No, it moved in the opposite direction—across the grass, past the cottage; it was moving in the direction of the river.

And he followed—as though he were obliged to follow; slowly at first, as in a dream, but as the figure quickened its pace—more quickly too.

What was it, where was it going?

It moved lightly, more lightly than she had done of late, and now it was hurrying—hurrying across the crisp meadow, whose damp marshiness the frost had seized fast—hurrying towards the river.

And he hurried too; without thought, blindly.

But the moon slid behind a cloud again, all grew dark, and the spirit—if spirit it was—was lost in the shadow.

Still he hurried; now he seemed to see it here—now there—he was not sure; perhaps it was all a dream. But his liquor had never served him so before—and he had often been worse drunk.

He was near upon turning back, when the moon fringed the cloud with silver again, and gradually showed him the figure, as clear as in daylight, standing upon the bridge that led across to the road.

He looked; it was facing him, but though in the white light and to his heated sense the features looked ghostly still, and the eyes wild and inhuman, there was something life-like about the creature, and even as he looked, it threw up its arms and took one leap forwards and downwards into the water.

Then he awoke; he was no longer drunk. He did not stop to think—he dashed forward, stripping off his coat as he ran, and pushed through the reeds on the river bank, and plunged into the stream.

The cold of the water was horrible—it took his breath away. But, as luck would have it, the stream here was not deep but swift, and it carried the body towards him; he clutched it, caught it, and, half swimming, half wading, brought it, in little more than a minute, safely on to the bank.

His teeth were chattering, but it was not with fright now; he had forgotten that he had once fancied this to have been a ghost.

It was a girl, and it lay motionless.

He stripped off the shoddy black jacket and wrung the water from it, then tried to wring it from the poor, clinging cotton skirts, that were stiffening with frost in the biting air; after that he chafed the cold body, and took off the worn boots and emptied the water out of them; and then he searched in his pockets, and drew forth a half-pint flat bottle, which he put to her lips.

A pungent odour of common spirit filled the air.

“It’s lucky I left a drop,” he murmured to himself, and a keener satisfaction than he had ever experienced even from drinking it himself filled him as he watched the colour slowly come back to the ashen face. But it took a deal of rubbing again before the eyes opened, before any breath seemed to come struggling through those pale lips. Several times he was for leaving her and running for assistance, because he was frightened.

But the village was far behind, and he was afraid she might die while he was gone; so he waited with a beating heart, and at last she moved and tried to speak.

“D’ye feel better now?” said he.

She nodded feebly.

He passed his hand under her head and set her up against his knee.

But the head drooped again, and she began to shiver.

“She didn’t ought to be ’ere,” he muttered to himself; “it’s freezin’ plaguey ’ard, and she soaked through.”

“D’ye think ye can walk?” said he to her ear.

She did not answer, and he scratched his head.

Then suddenly an inspiration came to him. He knew a way into the old home by the back; it would be empty and cheerless, but it would be safer than the frosty night air, and maybe he might be lucky enough to find a morsel of old wood with which he might light a bit of a fire.

It was worth trying, and without more ado he took the poor thing in his arms, and stumbled up the meadow with her.

She was light enough in all conscience, and she lay passive.

Yes, the rotten old door was broken, as he last remembered it, and he pushed it open and bore her in. The place was bare, but he lay her down beside the cold hearth, with her head against the chimney-corner, and ran to the outhouse. The luck was with him to-night as it was not wont to be: there were some remnants of brushwood scattered about; he swept together a handful, and with the matches that luckily were safe and dry in the pocket of the coat he had cast off, he soon kindled a bit of a blaze in the forsaken old dwelling-room.

Then he hung her jacket to dry and set to work again to rub her body.

The warmth revived her, she crept as close as she could to it, shivering still.

He took out the bottle again, his best notion of help; but she shook her head at the sight of it, and a sudden idea struck him.

“When did ye ’ave yer food last?” he asked.

She did not answer.

“Maybe ye’re ’ungry?” he said.

And as she was still silent, he turned out his pockets again, and produced a broken bit of dry crust.

“It’s all I left o’ my dinner,” he said, “but it’ll stay yer stomach till ye can get ’ome.”

She let him put it into her hand, but she did not eat.

“It’s a queer thing,” said he ruminatingly, “women don’t seem to ’ave no pecker when they ain’t fit.”

She shivered again.

“Now, look ’ere,” said he, drawing out the spirit bottle once more, “ye’ve got to have another go at this or I’m damned, and then ye’ve got to eat that crust.”

He forced it on her, and she submitted, and then he added: “And as soon as ye can walk ye ought to go ’ome. Ye’ll catch yer death in them damp clothes.”

She was silent, and he stood watching her nibbling the crust, while he took a pull at the spirit himself.

A notion seemed to occur to him, and he paused with the flask in his hand.

“What did ye go and jump into the water for?” he said at last, perhaps thinking that what she wanted was to “catch her death.”

And as still she was dumb, he added another to the string of his questions: “Where d’ye live?”

Then at last she answered.

“Nowhere,” said she bitterly.

He started.

“What, ain’t ye got no ’ome?” asked he.

“No,” she said.

He whistled.

“No more ’aven’t I,” he said.

“Nor yet no mother?” he added in a low voice after a while.

“No,” she said.

He looked round the ghostly, deserted old home—at the figure huddled by the hearth where another had been wont to cook his meals, at the empty window where a familiar chair had once stood.

“No more ’aven’t I,” he said. And after a pause he added with a half laugh, “P’raps ye ’aven’t even got no work?”

“No,” she replied for the third time.

And he laughed outright as he added again: “No more ’aven’t I!”

He walked to the window, and she struggled to her feet.

“So I guess ye wanted to catch yer death,” he muttered.

She stood hanging over the blaze that was beginning to flicker down, and he with his back to her at the window gazing out into the garden, where the moonlight lay white and hard on the frosted walk and on the dreary, empty potato patch.

If his mother had been up-stairs she would have known what to do now. She had always known what to do somehow. And suddenly there crossed his mind a vision of her taking into the house a poor starved dog that had been hooted down the road by the village boys.

Yes, she would have known what to do. But she was not up-stairs.

“I s’pose there’s plenty as wouldn’t mind a-catchin’ their death,” murmured he, half to himself. “Folk as ’ave made a mess of it, or as ’aven’t got no one to work for.”

The girl at the fire threw up her head almost proudly.

“I ain’t what yer might think,” she said. “I ain’t done nothin’ wus than starve. They turned me off at the factory, but it weren’t no fault o’ mine.”

“Weren’t ye drunk?” asked the boy simply.

Her wan face flushed purple.

“Drunk!” said she. “I ain’t never been drunk in my life.” And she moved from him.

Then he flushed too—ashamed.

“I beg yer pardon,” he stammered. “It’s what they turn me off for—but o’ course ... I beg yer pardon!”

“Granted,” said she. “It’s likely ye should think so. But my dead mother might see me and welcome, for all the ’arm I’ve a-done, and that’s the truth!”

He shivered at the words and looked round.

“I wish I could say as much,” said he.

She looked at him and came a step nearer, but the sob that had risen in her throat at his unintentional insult had turned to a fit of coughing, and she could not speak.

He turned quickly to the hearth, and kicked the bits of stick together with his foot; but there was no more life in them, they were burnt out, and there were no more.

“Ye’re catchin’ yer death o’ cold,” repeated he testily. “I dursen’t advise ye to stop ’ere no longer. Let me show ye the way to the next village, if ye’re a stranger to the place. Leastways, I think there’s a parcel o’ ’ouses afore ye come to it, where ye might get a night’s lodgin’.”

She laughed harshly, and he stopped—confused.

He guessed her meaning.

“’Aven’t ye got no money?” asked he after a minute or two, timidly.

“No,” she answered, struggling fiercely with tears again. “I’ve been out o’ work this three weeks. Ye’d ha’ done best to leave me where I was!”

“Don’t say that,” said he quite gently. “The luck’s bound to turn.”

She stood quietly wiping a tear now and then, and he beside her turning his hand round and round in his breeches pocket.

At last he pulled the hand out and held it towards her: there was a silver coin in it.

“Ye’d best take it,” said he sheepishly. “I ’ad my week’s wage to-day, though they ’ave a-turned me off, and I can spare it nicely. It’ll get ye a bed and a bit o’ supper anyways.”

Her face flushed and her lip quivered again. But she took it.

“Ye’re very kind,” said she. “I ought to thank ye, I’m sure. If mother was alive...”

Her voice shook, and she didn’t finish the sentence.

He stepped to the hearth and took up her wretched little jacket that had lain there a-drying, handing it to her clumsily. Her last words echoed in his ears.

She took the jacket, and pushed her poor, thin arms into its shrunken sleeves; it was damp still, and it would not meet, even across her narrow chest.

“The luck’ll turn,” he repeated awkwardly. “It allers do turn—one way or t’other. Ye must try for work again at Hoo, yonder. There’s another factory there.”

“Seems as though God A’mighty did ought to give me another chance,” she said with a sigh, “if it were on’y for this. For I shan’t be able to pay ye back else.”

He had opened the cranky door, and they had passed out into the moonlit frostiness.

“Never think o’ that,” said he.

“I shall though,” she declared. “Ye must show me your ’ome, so as I shall know where to find ye to pay it back agin—when I do get work.”

“My ’ome!” echoed he.

And he turned and looked at the deserted cottage with its closed, silent windows.

From the chimney a faint line of smoke from the remnants of the fire that he had lit was stealing up straight into the calm, cold air—ascending steadily, like incense, into the sky.

He caught his breath.

“This’d be the best place,” he said. “I’ll come ’ere next Saturday night and see if ye’re anywheres about. I’d like to ’ear ’ow ye was a-gettin’ on, but I don’t want the money.”

They had crossed the garden by this time, and stood at the gate.

“I shan’t rest till I can bring it ye though,” said she. “I ’aven’t never borrowed from nobody afore. That was why ... you know...! P’r’aps I didn’t ought to ha’ took it now. But it seemed as though ... well, it seemed as though, if yer pulled me out o’ the water, I’d got to keep the life in me! I couldn’t ha’ felt like taking it from no one else, I think. But there, ye’re a good sort, and I’ll owe it to you. But I’ll pay you—s’elp me God.”

She shoved the gate open and went out into the road, he following.

“A good sort!” He “a good sort!” An hour ago he would ... no, not have laughed; he would have sworn, to say the very least of it, at any one who had dared to say such a thing; for he would have known they meant it as an insult. But he neither laughed nor swore at this woman. He simply stood still and looked at her.

The clock in the church steeple up the stream struck ten.

“Ye’ll ’ave to look sharp,” said he, “or no one won’t take ye in to-night.”

She was shivering in the bitter air, and she could walk but slowly; still she walked alone.

He moved a few steps beside her, then stopped.

A sudden instinct that he could not have defined bade him send her on her way alone.

“Ye’ll do now,” said he, “won’t ye? Them’s the cottages—up there to yer right. You knock at the first door—there’s an old woman lives there—she used to be mother’s chum. She’d take ye in, if ’twas for nothing, but that ... if she only knowed....”

Nat blushed, and he was not in the habit of blushing, and stammered as he was not in the habit of stammering, for he did not know how to finish his sentence.

“Well, anyways ye’ve got the money,” concluded he, “and if it comes to that—there’s a ‘public’ at Hoo where they lets out beds. So you look sharp.”

“Good-night; and thank ye,” said the girl.

“Good-night,” answered he.

“I shan’t forget what you done for me,” said she.

“Oh, stow that,” he said.

He watched her as she moved slowly along: watched her till she had turned up the lane to the cluster of cottages, and waited to see if she would come back on it.

He put his hand in his pocket to feel for his pipe and matches; the matches were gone, and he remembered that he had used them to light the fire—yonder in his old home, on the hearth where his mother had been wont to boil the pot for his supper.

He turned and looked again.

The trail of smoke from the old chimney was thinner and fainter—but it was still there—ascending softly and steadily.

His heart was lighter at the sight of it, and he whistled gently to himself.

The girl had not reappeared; she must be housed and safe by now.

He set his face back whence he had come, and went on his way content.

A little bird twittered pitifully in the frost-bound hedge as he passed.

He searched for the place and found it; it was dying of cold and hunger.

He put it in his warm bosom within his coat; he thought that he would feed it when he got in, and that perhaps he might bring it back to life.

The Times.—‘With the exception of The Scapegoat, this is unquestionably the finest and most dramatic of Mr. Hall Caine’s novels ... The Manxman goes very straight to the roots of human passion and emotion. It is a remarkable book, throbbing with human interest.’

The Guardian.—‘A story of exceptional power and thorough originality. The greater portion of it is like a Greek tragic drama, in the intensity of its interest, and the depth of its overshadowing gloom.... But this tragedy is merely a telling background for a series of brilliant sketches of men and manners, of old-world customs, and forgotten ways of speech which still linger in the Isle of Man.’

The Standard.—‘A singularly powerful and picturesque piece of work, extraordinarily dramatic.... Taken altogether, The Manxman cannot fail to enhance Mr. Hall Caine’s reputation. It is a most powerful book.’

The Morning Post.—‘If possible, Mr. Hall Caine’s work, The Manxman, is more marked by passion, power, and brilliant local colouring than its predecessors.... It has a grandeur as well as strength, and the picturesque features and customs of a delightful country are vividly painted.’

The World.—‘Over and above the absorbing interest of the story, which never flags, the book is full of strength, of vivid character sketches, and powerful word-painting, all told with a force and knowledge of local colour.’

The Queen.—‘The Manxman is undoubtedly one of the most remarkable books of the century. It will be read and re-read, and take its place in the literary inheritance of the English-speaking nations.’

The St. James’s Gazette.—‘The Manxman is a contribution to literature, and the most fastidious critic would give in exchange for it a wilderness of that deciduous trash which our publishers call fiction.... It is not possible to part from The Manxman with anything but a warm tribute of approval.’—Edmund Gosse.

The Christian World.—‘There is a great fascination in being present, as it were, at the birth of a classic; and a classic undoubtedly The Manxman is... He who reads The Manxman feels that he is reading a book which will be read and re-read by very many thousands with human tears and human laughter.’

Mr. T. P. O’Connor, in the ‘Sun.’—‘This is a very fine and great story—one of the finest and greatest of our time.... Mr. Hall Caine reaches heights which are attained only by the greatest masters of fiction.... I think of the great French writer, Stendhal, at the same moment as the great English writer.... In short, you feel what Mr. Howells said of Tolstoi, “This is not like life; it is life.”... He belongs to that small minority of the Great Elect of Literature.’

The Scotsman.—‘It is not too much to say that it is the most powerful story that has been written in the present generation.... The love of Pete, his simple-mindedness, his sufferings when he has lost Kate, are painted with a master-hand.... It is a work of genius.’

Mr. Gladstone.—‘The Bondman is a work of which I recognise the freshness, vigour, and sustained interest, no less than its integrity of aim.’

The Times.—‘It is impossible to deny originality and rude power to this saga, impossible not to admire its forceful directness, and the colossal grandeur of its leading characters.’

The Academy.—‘The language of The Bondman is full of nervous, graphic, and poetical English; its interest never flags, and its situations and descriptions are magnificent. It is a splendid novel.’

The Speaker.—‘This is the best book that Mr. Hall Caine has yet written, and it reaches a level to which fiction very rarely attains.... We are, in fact so loth to let such good work be degraded by the title of “novel” that we are almost tempted to consider its claim to rank as a prose epic.’

The Scotsman.—‘Mr. Hall Caine has in this work placed himself beyond the front rank of the novelists of the day. He has produced a story which, for the ingenuity of its plot, for its literary excellence, for its delineations of human passions, and for its intensely powerful dramatic scenes, is distinctly ahead of all the fictional literature of our time, and fit to rank with the most powerful fictional writing of the past century.’

The AthenÆum.—‘Crowded with incidents.’

The Observer.—‘Many of the descriptions are picturesque and powerful.... As fine in their way as anything in modern literature.’

The Liverpool Mercury.—‘A story which will be read, not by his contemporaries alone, but by later generations, so long as its chief features—high emotion, deep passion, exquisite poetry, and true pathos—have power to delight and to touch the heart.’

The Pall Mall Gazette.—‘It is the product of a strenuous and sustained imaginative effort far beyond the power of any every-day story-teller.’

The Scots Observer.—‘In none of his previous works has he approached the splendour of idealism which flows through The Bondman.’

The Manchester Guardian.—‘A remarkable story, painted with vigour and brilliant effect.’

The St. James’s Gazette.—‘A striking and highly dramatic piece of fiction.’

The Literary World.—‘The book abounds in pages of great force and beauty, and there is a touch of almost Homeric power in its massive and grand simplicity.’

The Liverpool Post.—‘Graphic, dramatic, pathetic, heroic, full of detail, crowded with incident and inspired by a noble purpose.’

The Yorkshire Post.—‘A book of lasting interest.’

London: WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21 Bedford Street, W.C.

Mr. Gladstone writes:—‘I congratulate you upon The Scapegoat as a work of art, and especially upon the noble and skilfully drawn character of Israel.’

Mr. Walter Besant, in ‘The Author.’—‘Nearly every year there stands out a head and shoulders above its companions one work which promises to make the year memorable. This year a promise of lasting vitality is distinctly made by Mr. Hall Caine’s Scapegoat. It is a great book, great in conception and in execution; a strong book, strong in situation and in character; and a human book, human in its pathos, its terror, and its passion.’

The Times.—‘In our judgment it excels in dramatic force all the Author’s previous efforts. For grace and touching pathos Naomi is a character which any romancist in the world might be proud to have created, and the tale of her parents’ despair and hopes, and of her own development, confers upon The Scapegoat a distinction which is matchless of its kind.’

The Guardian.—‘Mr. Hall Caine is undoubtedly master of a style which is peculiarly his own. He is in a way a Rembrandt among novelists. His figures, striking and powerful rather than beautiful, stand out, with the ruggedness of their features developed and accentuated, from a background of the deepest gloom.... Every sentence contains a thought, and every word of it is balanced and arranged to accumulate the intensity of its force.’

The AthenÆum.—‘It is a delightful story to read.’

The Academy.—‘Israel ben Oliel is the third of a series of the most profoundly conceived characters in modern fiction.’

The Saturday Review.—‘This is the best novel which Mr. Caine has yet produced.’

The Literary World.—‘The lifelike renderings of the varied situations, the gradual changes in a noble character, hardened and lowered by the world’s cruel usage, and returning at last to its original grandeur, can only be fully appreciated by a perusal of the book as a whole.’

The Anti-Jacobin.—‘It is, in truth, a romance of fine poetic quality. Israel Ben Oliel, the central figure of the tale, is sculptured rather than drawn: a character of grand outline. A nobler piece of prose than the death of Ruth we have seldom met with.’

The Scotsman.—‘The new story will rank with Mr. Hall Caine’s previous productions. Nay, it will in some respects rank above them. It will take its place by the side of the Hebrew histories in the Apocrypha. It is nobly and manfully written. It stirs the blood and kindles the imagination.’

The Scottish Leader.—‘The Scapegoat is a masterpiece.’

Truth.—‘Mr. Hall Caine has been winning his way slowly, but surely, and securely, I think also, to fame. You must by all means read his absorbing Moorish romance, The Scapegoat.’

The Jewish World.—‘Only one who had studied Moses could have drawn that grand portrait of Israel ben Oliel.’

The AthenÆum.—‘It is so full of interest, and the characters are so eccentrically humorous yet true, that one feels inclined to pardon all its faults, and give oneself up to unreserved enjoyment of it.... The twins Angelica and Diavolo, young barbarians, utterly devoid of all respect, conventionality, or decency, are among the most delightful and amusing children in fiction.’

The Academy.—‘The adventures of Diavolo and Angelica—the "heavenly twins"—are delightfully funny. No more original children were ever put into a book. Their audacity, unmanageableness, and genius for mischief—in none of which qualities, as they are here shown, is there any taint of vice—are refreshing; and it is impossible not to follow, with very keen interest, the progress of these youngsters.’

The Daily Telegraph.—‘Everybody ought to read it, for it is an inexhaustible source of refreshing and highly stimulating entertainment.’

The World.—‘There is much powerful and some beautiful writing in this strange book.’

The Westminster Gazette.—‘Sarah Grand ... has put enough observation, humour, and thought into this book to furnish forth half-a-dozen ordinary novels.’

Punch.—‘The Twins themselves are a creation: the epithet “Heavenly” for these two mischievous little fiends is admirable.’

The Queen.—‘There is a touch of real genius in The Heavenly Twins.’

The Guardian.—‘Exceptionally brilliant in dialogue, and dealing with modern society life, this book has a purpose—to draw out and emancipate women.’

The Lady.—‘Apart from its more serious interest, the book should take high rank on its literary merits alone. Its pages are brimful of good things, and more than one passage, notably the episode of “The Boy and the Tenor,” is a poem complete in itself, and worthy of separate publication.’

The Manchester Examiner.—‘As surely as Tess of the d’Urbervilles swept all before it last year, so surely has Sarah Grand’s Heavenly Twins provoked the greatest attention and comment this season. It is a most daringly original work.... Sarah Grand is a notable Woman’s Righter, but her book is the one asked for at Mudie’s, suburban, and seaside libraries, and discussed at every hotel table in the kingdom. The episode of the “Tenor and the Boy” is of rare beauty, and is singularly delicate and at the same time un-English in treatment.’

The New York Critic.—‘It is written in an epigrammatic style, and, besides its cleverness, has the great charm of freshness, enthusiasm, and poetic feeling.’

The Morning Post.—‘Sarah Grand’s Ideala.... A clever book in itself, is especially interesting when read in the light of her later works. Standing alone, it is remarkable as the outcome of an earnest mind seeking in good faith the solution of a difficult and ever present problem.... Ideala is original and somewhat daring.... The story is in many ways delightful and thought-suggesting.’

The Literary World.—‘When Sarah Grand came before the public in 1888 with Ideala, she consciously and firmly laid her finger on one of the keynotes of the age.... We welcome an edition that will place this minute and careful study of an interesting question within reach of a wider circle of readers.’

The Liverpool Mercury.—‘The book is a wonderful one—an evangel for the fair sex, and at once an inspiration and a comforting companion, to which thoughtful womanhood will recur again and again.’

The Glasgow Herald.—‘Ideala has attained the honour of a fifth edition.... The stir created by The Heavenly Twins, the more recent work by the same authoress, Madame Sarah Grand, would justify this step. Ideala can, however, stand on its own merits.’

The Yorkshire Post.—‘As a psychological study the book cannot fail to be of interest to many readers.’

The Birmingham Gazette.—‘Madame Sarah Grand thoroughly deserves her success. Ideala, the heroine, is a splendid conception, and her opinions are noble.... The book is not one to be forgotten.’

The Woman’s Herald.—‘One naturally wishes to know something of the woman for whose sake Lord Downe remained a bachelor. It must be confessed that at first Ideala is a little disappointing. She is strikingly original.... As the story advances one forgets these peculiarities, and can find little but sympathy and admiration for the many noble qualities of a very complex character.’

The Englishman.—‘Madame Sarah Grand’s work is far from being a common work. Ideala is a clever young woman of great capabilities and noble purposes.... The originalityoriginality of the book does not lie in the plot, but in the authoress’s power to see and to describe the finer shades of a character which is erratic and impetuous, but above all things truly womanly.’

The Daily Telegraph.—‘Six stories by the gifted writer who still chooses to be known to the public at large by the pseudonym of “Sarah Grand.” In regard to them it is sufficient to say that they display all the qualities, stylistic, humorous, and pathetic, that have placed the author of Ideala and The Heavenly Twins in the very front rank of contemporary novelists.’

The Globe.—‘Brief studies of character, sympathetic, and suggesting that “Sarah Grand” can do something more than startle by her unconventionality and boldness.’

The Ladies’ Pictorial.—‘If the volume does not achieve even greater popularity than Sarah Grand’s former works, it will be a proof that fashion, not intrinsic merit, has a great deal to do with the success of a book.’

The Pall Mall Gazette.—‘All are eminently entertaining.’

The Spectator.—‘Insight into, and general sympathy with widely differing phases of humanity, coupled with power to reproduce what is seen, with vivid distinct strokes, that rivet the attention, are qualifications for work of the kind contained in Our Manifold Nature which Sarah Grand evidently possesses in a high degree.... All these studies, male and female alike, are marked by humour, pathos, fidelity to life, and power to recognise in human nature the frequent recurrence of some apparently incongruous and remote trait, which, when at last it becomes visible, helps to a comprehension of what might otherwise be inexplicable.’

The Speaker.—‘In Our Manifold Nature Sarah Grand is seen at her best. How good that is can only be known by those who read for themselves this admirable little volume. In freshness of conception and originality of treatment these stories are delightful, full of force and piquancy, whilst the studies of character are carried out with equal firmness and delicacy.’

The Guardian.—‘Our Manifold Nature is a clever book. Sarah Grand has the power of touching common things, which, if it fails to make them “rise to touch the spheres,” renders them exceedingly interesting.’

The Morning Post.—‘Unstinted praise is deserved by the Irish story, “Boomellen,” a tale remarkable both for power and pathos.’

The Court Journal.—‘Our Manifold Nature is simply fall of good things, and it is essentially a book to buy as well as to read.’

The Birmingham Gazette.—‘Mrs. Grand has genuine power. She analyses keenly.... Her humour is good, and her delineation of character one of her strongest points. The book is one to be read, studied, and acted upon.’

The Times.—‘This is a novel of sensation. But the episodes and incidents, although thrilling enough, are consistently subordinated to sensationalism of character.... There is just enough of the coral reef and the palm groves, of cerulean sky and pellucid water, to indicate rather than to present the local colouring. Yet when he dashes in a sketch it is done to perfection.... We see the scene vividly unrolled before us.’

The Daily Telegraph.—‘The story is full of strong scenes, depicted with a somewhat lavish use of violet pigments, such as, perhaps, the stirring situations demand. Here and there, however, are purple patches, in which Mr. Stevenson shows all his cunning literary art—the description of the coral island, for instance.... Some intensely graphic and dramatic pages delineate the struggle which causes, and a final scene ... concludes this strange fragment from the wild life of the South Sea.’

The St. James’s Gazette.—‘The book takes your imagination and attention captive from the first chapter—nay, from the first paragraph—and it does not set them free till the last word has been read.’

The Standard.—‘Mr. Stevenson gives such vitality to his characters, and so clear an outlook upon the strange quarter of the world to which he takes us, that when we reach the end of the story, we come back to civilisation with a start of surprise, and a moment’s difficulty in realising that we have not been actually away from it.’

The Daily Chronicle.—‘We are swept along without a pause on the current of the animated and vigorous narrative. Each incident and adventure is told with that incomparable keenness of vision which is Mr. Stevenson’s greatest charm as a story-teller.’

The Pall Mall Gazette.—‘It is brilliantly invented, and it is not less brilliantly told. There is not a dull sentence in the whole run of it. And the style is fresh, alert, full of surprises—in fact, is very good latter-day Stevenson indeed.’

The World.—‘It is amazingly clever, full of that extraordinary knowledge of human nature which makes certain creations of Mr. Stevenson’s pen far more real to us than persons we have met in the flesh. Grisly the book undoubtedly is, with a strength and a vigour of description hardly to be matched in the language.... But it is just because the book is so extraordinarily good that it ought to be better, ought to be more of a serious whole than a mere brilliant display of fireworks, though each firework display has more genius in it than is to be found in ninety-nine out of every hundred books supposed to contain that rare quality.’

The Morning Post.—‘Boldly conceived, probing some of the darkest depths of the human soul, the tale has a vigour and breadth of touch which have been surpassed in none of Mr. Stevenson’s previous works.... We do not, of course, know how much Mr. Osbourne has contributed to the tale, but there is no chapter in it which any author need be unwilling to acknowledge, or which is wanting in vivid interest.’

Morning Post.—‘The merits of the book are great. Its range of observation is wide; its sketches of character are frequently admirably drawn.... It is extremely refreshing, after a surfeit of recent fiction of the prevalent type, to welcome a really clever work by a writer who is certainly not hampered by conventional prejudice.’

The Queen.—‘It is impossible to deny the greatness of a book like The Master, a veritable human document, in which the characters do exactly as they would in life.... I venture to say that Matt himself is one of the most striking and original characters in our fiction, and I have not the least doubt that The Master will always be reckoned one of our classics.’

The Daily Chronicle.—‘It is a powerful and masterly piece of work.... Quite the best novel of the year.’

Literary World.—‘In The Master, Mr. Zangwill has eclipsed all his previous work. This strong and striking story of patience and passion, of sorrow and success, of art, ambition, and vain gauds, is genuinely powerful in its tragedy, and picturesque in its completeness.... The work, thoroughly wholesome in tone, is of sterling merit, and strikes a truly tragic chord, which leaves a deep impression upon the mind.’

Jewish World.—‘For a novel to be a work that shall live, and not merely please the passing taste of a section of the public, it must palpitate with the truth of human experience and human feeling.... Such a novel is The Master, Mr. Zangwill’s latest, and assuredly one of his best works. Interest in the story is sustained from beginning to end. From the first page to the last we get a series of vivid pictures that make us feel, as well as understand, not only the personality and environment of his characters, but the motives that compel, like fate, their words and actions.’

Leeds Mercury.—‘The Master is impassioned and powerful, and, in our judgment, is vastly superior to Children of the Ghetto. From the first page to the last the book is quick with life, and not less quick surprises.... The impression which the book leaves is deep and distinct, and the power, from start to finish, of such a delineation of life is unmistakable.’

Liverpool Mercury.—‘The accomplished author of Children of the Ghetto has given us in The Master a book written with marvellous skill, and characterised by vivid imaginative power. It is not a volume to be taken up and despatched in a leisure evening, but one to be studied and enjoyed in many an hour of quiet, or to be read aloud in the family circle, when the toils of the day have given place to retirement and peace.’

The Times.—‘From whatever point of view we regard it, it is a remarkable book.’

The AthenÆum.—‘The chief interest of the book lies in the wonderful description of the Whitechapel Jews. The vividness and force with which Mr. Zangwill brings before us the strange and uncouth characters with which he has peopled his book are truly admirable.... Admirers of Mr. Zangwill’s fecund wit will not fail to find flashes of it in these pages.’

The Daily Chronicle.—‘Altogether we are not aware of any such minute, graphic, and seemingly faithful picture of the Israel of nineteenth century London.... The book has taken hold of us.’

The Spectator.—‘Esther Ansell, Raphael Leon, Mrs. Henry Goldsmith, Reb Shemuel, and the rest, are living creations.’

The Speaker.—‘A strong and remarkable book.’

The National Observer.—‘To ignore this book is not to know the East End Jew.’

The Guardian.—‘A novel such as only our own day could produce. A masterly study of a complicated psychological problem in which every factor is handled with such astonishing dexterity and intelligence that again and again we are tempted to think a really good book has come into our hands.’

The Graphic.—‘Absolutely fascinating. Teaches how closely akin are laughter and tears.’

Black and White.—‘A moving panorama of Jewish life, full of truth, full of sympathy, vivid in the setting forth, and occasionally most brilliant. Such a book as this has the germs of a dozen novels. A book to read, to keep, to ponder over, to remember.’

W. Archer in ‘The World.’—‘The most powerful and fascinating book I have read for many a long day.’

Land and Water.—‘The most wonderful multi-coloured and brilliant description. Dickens has never drawn characters of more abiding individuality. An exceeding beautiful chapter is the honeymoon of the Hyams. Charles Kingsley in one of his books makes for something of the same sort. But his idea is not half so tender and faithful, nor his handling anything like so delicate and natural.’

Andrew Lang in ‘Longman’s Magazine.’—‘Almost every kind of reader will find Children of the Ghetto interesting.’

T. P. O’Connor in ‘The Weekly Sun.’—‘Apart altogether from its great artistic merits, from its clear portraits, its subtle and skilful analysis of character, its pathos and its humour, this book has, in my mind, an immense interest as a record of a generation that has passed and of struggles that are yet going on.’

The Manchester Guardian.—‘The best Jewish novel ever written.’

The AthenÆum.—‘Several of Mr. Zangwill’s contemporary Ghetto characters have already become almost classical; but in The King of Schnorrers he goes back to the Jewish community of the eighteenth century for the hero of his principal story; and he is indeed a stupendous hero ... anyhow, he is well named the king of beggars. The illustrations, by Phil May, add greatly to the attraction of the book.’

The Saturday Review.—‘Mr. Zangwill has created a new figure in fiction, and a new type of humour. The entire series of adventures is a triumphant progress.... Humour of a rich and active character pervades the delightful history of Manasses. Mr. Zangwill’s book is altogether very good reading. It is also very cleverly illustrated by Phil May and other artists.’

The Literary World.—‘Of Mr. Zangwill’s versatility there is ample proof in this new volume of stories.... More noticeable and welcome to us, as well as more characteristic of the author, are the fresh additions he has made to his long series of studies of Jewish life.’

The St. James’s Gazette.—‘The King of Schnorrers is a very fascinating story. Mr. Zangwill returns to the Ghetto, and gives us a quaint old-world picture as a most appropriate setting for his picturesque hero, the beggar-king.... Good as the story of the arch-schnorrer is there is perhaps an even better “Yiddish” tale in this book. This is “Flutter-Duck.”... Let us call attention to the excellence, as mere realistic vivid description, of the picture of the room and atmosphere and conditions in which Flutter-Duck and her circle dwelt; there is something of Dickens in this.’

The Daily Telegraph.—‘The King of Schnorrers, like Children of the Ghetto, depicts the habits and characteristics of Israel in London with painstaking elaborateness and apparent verisimilitude. The King of Schnorrers is a character-sketch which deals with the manners and customs of native and foreign Jews as they “lived and had their being” in the London of a century and a quarter ago.’

The Daily Chronicle.—‘It is a beautiful story. The King of Schnorrers is that great rarity—an entirely new thing, that is as good as it is new.’

The Glasgow Herald.--‘On the whole, the book does justice to Mr. Zangwill’s rapidly-growing reputation, and the character of Manasseh ought to live.’

The World.—‘The exuberant and even occasionally overpowering humour of Mr. Zangwill is at his highest mark in his new volume, The King of Schnorrers.’

The Cambridge (University) Review.—‘That the book will have readers in a future generation we do not doubt, for there is much in it that is of lasting merit.’

The Graphic.—‘It might be worth the while of some industrious and capable person with plenty of leisure to reproduce in a volume of reasonable size the epigrams and other good things witty and serious which The Premier and the Painter contains. There are plenty of them, and many are worth noting and remembering,’

St. James’s Gazette.—‘The satire hits all round with much impartiality; while one striking situation succeeds another till the reader is altogether dazzled. The story is full of life and “go” and brightness, and will well repay perusal.’

The AthenÆum.—‘In spite of its close print and its five hundred pages The Premier and the Painter is not very difficult to read. To speak of it, however, is difficult. It is the sort of book that demands yet defies quotation for one thing; and for another it is the sort of book the description of which as “very clever” is at once inevitable and inadequate. In some ways it is original enough to be a law unto itself, and withal as attractive in its whimsical, wrong-headed way, as at times it is tantalising, bewildering, even tedious. The theme is politics and politicians, and the treatment, while for the most part satirical and prosaic, is often touched with sentiment, and sometimes even with a fantastic kind of poetry. The several episodes of the story are wildly fanciful in themselves and are clumsily connected; but the streak of humorous cynicism which shows through all of them is both curious and pleasing. Again, it has to be claimed for the author that—as is shown to admiration by his presentation of the excellent Mrs. Dawe and her cookshop—he is capable, when he pleases, of insight and observation of a high order, and therewith of a masterly sobriety of tone. But he cannot be depended upon for the length of a single page; he seeks his effects and his material when and where he pleases. In some respects his method is not, perhaps, altogether unlike Lord Beaconsfield’s. To our thinking, however, he is strong enough to go alone, and to go far.’

The World.—‘Undeniably clever, though with a somewhat mixed and eccentric cleverness.’

The Morning Post.—‘The story is described as a “fantastic romance,” and, indeed, fantasy reigns supreme from the first to the last of its pages. It relates the history of our time with humour and well-aimed sarcasm. All the most prominent characters of the day, whether political or otherwise, come in for notice. The identity of the leading politicians is but thinly veiled, while many celebrities appear in propri personÂ. Both the “Premier” and “Painter” now and again find themselves in the most critical situations. Certainly this is not a story that he who runs may read, but it is cleverly original, and often lightened by bright flashes of wit.’

The Times.—‘He is a remarkably even writer. And this novel is almost as good a medium as any other for studying the delicacy and dexterity of his workmanship.’

The National Observer.—‘Interesting and well written, as all Mr. Norris’s stories are.’

The Morning Post.—‘The fidelity of his portraiture is remarkable, and it has rarely appeared to so much advantage as in this brilliant novel.’

The Saturday Review.—‘The Countess Radna, which its author not unjustly describes as “an unpretending tale,” avoids, by the grace of its style and the pleasant accuracy of its characterisation, any suspicion of boredom.’

The Daily News.—‘The Countess Radna contains many of the qualities that make a story by this writer welcome to the critic. It is caustic in style, the character drawing is clear, the talk natural; the pages are strewn with good things worth quoting.’

The Speaker.—‘In style, skill in construction, and general “go,” it is worth a dozen ordinary novels.’

The Academy.—‘As a whole, the book is decidedly well written, while it is undeniably interesting. It is bright and wholesome: the work in fact of a gentleman and a man who knows the world about which he writes.’

Black and White.—‘The novel, like all Mr. Norris’s work is an excessively clever piece of work, and the author never for a moment allows his grasp of his plot and his characters to slacken.’

The Gentlewoman.—‘Mr. Norris is a practised hand at his craft. He can write bright dialogue and clear English, too.’

The Literary World.—‘His last novel, The Countess Radna, is an excellent sample of his style. The plot is simple enough. But the story holds the attention and insists upon being read; and it is scarcely possible to say anything more favourable of a work of fiction.’

The Scotsman.—‘The story, in which there is more than a spice of modern life romance, is an excellent study of the problem of mixed marriage. The book is one of good healthy reading, and reveals a fine broad view of life and human nature.’

The Glasgow Herald.—‘This is an unusually fresh and well-written story. The tone is thoroughly healthy; and Mr. Norris, without being in the least old-fashioned, manages to get along without the aid of pessimism, psychology, naturalism, or what is known as frank treatment of the relations between the sexes.’

The Westminster Gazette.—‘Mr. Norris writes throughout with much liveliness and force, saying now and then something that is worth remembering. And he sketches his minor characters with a firm touch.’

The Speaker.—‘A Victim of Good Luck is one of those breezy stories of his in which the reader finds himself moving in good society, among men or women who are neither better nor worse than average humanity, but who always show good manners and good breeding.... Suffice it to say that the story is as readable as any we have yet had from the same pen.’

The Daily Telegraph.—‘A Victim of Good Luck is one of the brightest novels of the year, which cannot but enhance its gifted author’s well-deserved fame and popularity.’

The World.—‘Here is Mr. Norris in his best form again, giving us an impossible story with such imperturbable composure, such quiet humour, easy polish, and irresistible persuasiveness, that he makes us read A Victim of Good Luck right through with eager interest and unflagging amusement without being aware, until we regretfully reach the end, that it is just a farcical comedy in two delightful volumes.’

The Daily Chronicle.—‘It has not a dull page from first to last. Any one with normal health and taste can read a book like this with real pleasure.’

The Globe.—‘Mr. W. E. Norris is a writer who always keeps us on good terms with ourselves. We can pick up or lay down his books at will, but they are so pleasant in style and equable in tone that we do not usually lay them down till we have mastered them; A Victim of Good Luck is a more agreeable novel than most of this author’s.’

The Westminster Gazette.—‘A Victim of Good Luck is in Mr. Norris’s best vein, which means that it is urbane, delicate, lively, and flavoured with a high quality of refined humour. Altogether a most refreshing book, and we take it as a pleasant reminder that Mr. Norris is still very near his highwater mark.’

The Spectator.—‘Mr. Norris displays to the full his general command of narrative expedients which are at once happily invented and yet quite natural—which seem to belong to their place in the book, just as a keystone belongs to its place in the arch.... The brightest and cleverest book which Mr. Norris has given us since he wrote The Rogue.’

The Saturday Review.—‘Novels which are neither dull, unwholesome, morbid, nor disagreeable, are so rare in these days, that A Victim of Good Luck ... ought to find a place in a book-box filled for the most part with light literature.... We think it will increase the reputation of an already very popular author.’

The Scotsman.—‘A Victim of Good Luck, like others of this author’s books, depends little on incident and much on the conception and drawing of character, on clever yet natural conversation, and on the working out, with masterly ease, of a novel problem of right and inclination.’

The Pall Mall Budget.—‘For this week the only novel worth mentioning is Mrs. Steel’s The Potter’s Thumb. Her admirable From the Five Rivers, since it dealt with native Indian life, was naturally compared with Mr. Kipling’s stories. In The Potter’s Thumb the charm which came from the freshness of them still remains. Almost every character is convincing, and some of them excellent to a degree.’

The Globe.—‘This is a brilliant story—a story that fascinates, tingling with life, steeped in sympathy with all that is best and saddest.’

The Manchester Guardian.—‘The impression left upon one after reading The Potter’s Thumb is that a new literary artist, of very great and unusual gifts, has arisen.... In short, Mrs. Steel must be congratulated upon having achieved a very genuine and amply deserved success.’

The Glasgow Herald.—‘A clever story which, in many respects, brings India very near to its readers. The novel is certainly one interesting alike to the Anglo-Indian and to those untravelled travellers who make their only voyages in novelists’ romantic company.’

The Scotsman.—‘It is a capital story, full of variety and movement, which brings with great vividness before the reader one of the phases of Anglo-Indian life. Mrs. Steel writes forcibly and sympathetically, and much of the charm of the picture which she draws lies in the force with which she brings out the contrast between the Asiatic and European world. The Potter’s Thumb is very good reading, with its mingling of the tragedy and comedy of life. Its evil woman par excellence ... is a finished study.’

The Westminster Gazette.—‘A very powerful and tragic story. Mrs. Steel gives us again, but with greater elaboration than before, one of those strong, vivid, and subtle pictures of Indian life which we have learnt to expect from her. To a reader who has not been in India her books seem to get deeper below the native crust, and to have more of the instinct for the Oriental than almost anything that has been written in this time.’

The Leeds Mercury.—‘The Potter’s Thumb is a powerful story of the mystical kind, and one which makes an instant appeal to the imagination of the reader.... There is an intensity of vision in this story which is as remarkable as it is rare, and the book, in its vivid and fascinating revelations of life, and some of its limitations, is at once brilliant and, in the deepest and therefore least demonstrative sense, impassioned.’

The National Observer.—‘A romance of East and West, in which the glamour, intrigue, and superstition of India are cunningly interwoven and artfully contrasted with the bright and changeable aspects of modern European society. “Love stories,” as Mr. Andrew Lang once observed, “are best done by women”; and Mrs. Steel’s treatment of Rose Tweedie’s love affair with Lewis Gordon is a brilliant instance in point. So sane and delightful an episode is rare in fiction now-a-days.’

The Times.—‘Time was when these sketches of native Punjabi society would have been considered a curiosity in literature. They are sufficiently remarkable, even in these days, when interest in the “dumb millions” of India is thoroughly alive, and writers, great and small, vie in ministering to it. They are the more notable as being the work of a woman. Mrs. Steel has evidently been brought into close contact with the domestic life of all classes, Hindu and Mahomedan, in city and village, and has steeped herself in their customs and superstitions.... Mrs. Steel’s book is of exceptional merit and freshness.’

Vanity Fair.—‘Stories of the Punjaub—evidently the work of one who has an intimate knowledge of, and a kindly sympathy for, its people. It is to be hoped that this is not the last book of Indian stories that Mrs. Steel will give us.’

The Spectator.—‘Merit, graphic force, and excellent local colouring are conspicuous in Mrs. Steel’s From the Five Rivers, and the short stories of which the volume is composed are evidently the work of a lady who knows what she is writing about.’

The Glasgow Herald.—‘This is a collection of sketches of Hindu life, full for the most part of brilliant colouring and cleverly wrought in dialect. The writer evidently knows her subject, and she writes about it with unusual skill.’

The North British Daily Mail.—‘In at least two of the sketches in Mrs. Steel’s book we have a thoroughly descriptive delineation of life in Indian, or rather, Hindoo, villages. “Ganesh Chunel” is little short of a masterpiece, and the same might be said of “Shah Sujah’s Mouse.” In both we are made the spectator of the conditions of existence in rural India. The stories are told with an art that conceals the art of story-telling.’

The AthenÆum.—‘They possess this great merit, that they reflect the habits, modes of life, and ideas of the middle and lower classes of the population of Northern India better than do systematic and more pretentious works.’

The Leeds Mercury.--‘By no means a book to neglect.... It is written with brains.... Mrs. Steel understands the life which she describes, and she has sufficient literary art to describe it uncommonly well. These short stories of Indian life are, in fact, quite above the average of stories long or short.... There is originality, insight, sympathy, and a certain dramatic instinct in the portrayal of character about the book.’

The Globe.—‘She puts before us the natives of our Empire in the East as they live and move and speak, with their pitiful superstitions, their strange fancies, their melancholy ignorance of what poses with us for knowledge and civilisation, their doubt of the new ways, the new laws, the new people. “Shah Sujah’s Mouse,” the gem of the collection—a touching tale of unreasoning fidelity towards an English "Sinny Baba"—is a tiny bit of perfect writing.’

The Standard.—‘The Last Sentence is a remarkable story; it abounds with dramatic situations, the interest never for a moment flags, and the characters are well drawn and consistent.’

The Saturday Review.—‘There is a great deal as well as a great variety of incident in the story, and more than twenty years are apportioned to it; but it never seems over-crowded, nor has it the appearance of several stories rolled into one. The Last Sentence is a remarkable novel, and the more so because its strong situations are produced without recourse to the grosser forms of immorality.’

The Daily Telegraph.—‘One of the most powerful and adroitly-worked-out plots embodied in any modern work of fiction runs through The Last Sentence.... This terrible tale of retribution is told with well-sustained force and picturesqueness, and abounds in light as well as shade.’

The Morning Post.—‘Maxwell Gray has the advantage of manner that is both cultured and picturesque, and while avoiding even the appearance of the melodramatic, makes coming events cast a shadow before them so as to excite and entertain expectation.... It required the imagination of an artist to select the kind of Nemesis which finally overtakes this successful evil-doer, and which affords an affecting climax to a rather fascinating tale.’

The Glasgow Herald.—‘This is a very strong story.... It contains much rich colouring, some striking situations, and plenty of thoroughly living characters. The interest is of a varied kind, and, though the hero is an aristocrat, the pictures of human life are by no means confined to the upper circles.’

The Leeds Mercury.—‘It shows a command of the resources of the novelist’s art which is by no means common, and it has other qualities which lift it far above the average level of the circulating library. It is written with a literary grace and a moral insight which are seldom at fault, and from first to last it is pervaded with deep human interest.’

The Queen.—‘Maxwell Gray has a certain charm and delicacy of style. She has mastered the subtleties of a particular type of weak character until she may be almost called its prophet.’

The Lady’s Pictorial.—‘The book is a clever and powerful one.... Cynthia Marlowe will live in our memories as a sweet and noble woman; one of whom it is a pleasure to think of beside some of the ‘emancipated’ heroines so common in the fiction of the day.’

The Manchester Courier.—‘The author of The Silence of Dean Maitland gives to the reading world another sound and magnificent work.... In both these works Maxwell Gray has taken “Nemesis” as his grand motif. In each work there sits behind the hero that atra cura which poisons the wholesome draught of human joy. In each is present the corroding blight that comes of evil done and not discovered.’

The AthenÆum.—‘There is no one but Mr. Kipling who can make his readers taste and smell, as well as see and hear, the East; and in this book (if we except the description of Tarvin’s adventures in the deserted city of Gunvaur, which is perhaps less clear-cut than usual) he has surely surpassed himself. In his faculty for getting inside the Eastern mind and showing its queer workings Mr. Kipling stands alone.’

The Academy.—‘The Naulahka contains passages of great merit. There are descriptions scattered through its pages which no one but Mr. Kipling could have written.... Whoever reads this novel will find much of it hard to forget ... and the story of the exodus from the hospital will rank among the best passages in modern fiction.’

The Times.—‘A happy idea, well adapted to utilize the respective experience of the joint authors.... An excellent story.... The dramatic train of incident, the climax of which is certainly the interview between Sitabhai and Tarvin, the alternate crudeness and ferocity of the girl-queen, the susceptibility of the full-blooded American, hardly kept in subjection by his alertness and keen eye to business, the anxious eunuch waiting in the distance with the horses, and fretting as the stars grow paler and paler, the cough of the tiger slinking home at the dawn after a fruitless night’s hunt—the whole forms a scene not easily effaced from the memory.’

The Glasgow Herald.—‘An entrancing story beyond doubt.... The design is admirable—to bring into violent contrast and opposition the widely differing forces of the Old World and the New—and while, of course, it could have been done without the use of Americanese, yet that gives a wonderful freshness and realism to the story. The design is a bold one, and it has been boldly carried out.... The interest is not only sustained throughout, it is at times breathless.... The Maharajah, the rival queens, the pomp and peril of Rhatore, are clearly Mr. Kipling’s own, and some of the Indian chapters are in his best style.’

The Speaker.—‘In the presentation of Rhatore there is something of the old Kiplingesque glamour; it is to the pages of Mr. Kipling that one must go for the strange people and incidents of the royal household at Rhatore.... It is enough to say that the plotting of that most beautiful and most wicked gipsy, Sitabhai is interesting; that Sitabhai is well created; and that the chapter which describes her secret meeting with Tarvin is probably the finest and the most impressive in the book.’

The Bookman.—‘The real interest of the book is in the life behind the curtains of the Maharajah’s palace. The child Kunwar, his mother, the forsaken Zulu queen, the gipsy with her wicked arts, are pictures of Indian life, which even Mr. Kipling has not surpassed.’

The Speaker.—‘In his first book, Mr. Bailey-Martin, Mr. White gave us a remarkable picture of the sordidness of life in a suburban household. In the present volume he rises to a higher social level, and treats of rising members of Parliament, of political leaders, and even of Prime Ministers.... The sketches of types are both forcible and true.’

The Pall Mall Gazette.—‘None can travel over his brightly-written pages without being gladdened by the little flashes of epigram which light up the scene for us, or stirred by the shrewdness and worldly wisdom which he has put into the mouths of his characters. One of the charms of the book lies in the conviction that its author knows the world, and is full of a broad, full knowledge, and therefore sympathy with the foibles, passions, and sins with which it abounds.... It is a sermon preached on the old Æschylian text, that the evil doer must always suffer. The book is a drama of biting intensity, a tragedy of inflexible purpose and relentless result.’

The Daily News.—‘Will appeal to many tastes. There is intrigue enough in it for those who love a story of the ordinary kind, and the political part is perhaps rather more attractive in its sparkle and variety of incident than the real thing itself.’

The Daily Telegraph.—‘Corruption more than fulfils the brilliant promise of Mr. Bailey-Martin.... As its title indicates, it deals with the political and social cankers of the day, which it lays bare with a fearless and unerring touch.’

The Standard.—‘The scenes in the South of France are particularly well done; without any attempt at local colour Mr. White has caught the atmosphere skilfully, and there are one or two clever touches of which he appears unconscious. Taking the book as a whole, it is written with ease and knowledge, and has about it nothing of the amateur.’

The Graphic.—‘A very able piece of work.’

Black and White.—‘The risquÉ situation is wrought with brilliance and subtilty.... Mrs. Mannering recalls Becky Sharp; and Carew is a typical man of the day.... Mr. Percy White assuredly takes rank with the foremost of the society writers.’

The Globe.—‘A graphic picture of social life.’

The Glasgow Herald.—‘The characters are well conceived and cleverly portrayed; the dialogue is crisp and sparkling. There is not a dull moment in the volume.’

The Times.—‘Mr. White has written an audacious book.’

The AthenÆum.—‘Mr. White, with the aid of the necessary qualities—dry humour and delicate irony—succeeds nearly all the time.... The character is one exceedingly difficult to portray.... Mr. White has resisted the temptation to force and exaggerate the note, and this is probably the secret of his success.’

The Speaker.—‘There is cleverness enough in Mr. Bailey-Martin to furnish forth a dozen novels.... It shows not only a remarkable knowledge of contemporary life, but a keen insight into character, and a considerable degree of literary power.’

The Daily Telegraph.—‘The book teems with smart sayings and graphic characterisations, and cannot fail to make a mark among the cleverest novels of the year.’

The Daily Chronicle.—‘The book must be pronounced a well-nigh unqualified triumph.’

The Literary World.—‘Mr. Bailey-Martin is one of those books whose opportune arrival serves to reconcile the critic to his task.... Bright, fresh, vigorous in action, and told with a wealth of incident and humour.’

The New Budget, in a criticism on Mr. Percy White as a novelist, says—‘In my opinion, you are by far the cleverest of the younger—or shall I say, youngest?—generation of writers, with the exception, perhaps, of Mr. Street.... Your prose possesses in a high degree what I may call the lyrical note. At times you write like a poet rather than a writer of prose.... You serve in no school, and imitate no man.... In Mr. Bailey-Martin, though you write with an affectation of wholly dispassionate observation of your snob and his set, there is underlying that attitude a measureless contempt for your hero (if I may call him so) and his friends, which bites like an acid.’

The National Observer.—‘Admirably clever, and deserving to be read by those who are bored with the average novel.’

The Bookman.—‘One of the cleverest novels we have seen for many a day.... Take away from the average man a little of his affectation, and all his responsibilities; add some impudence, and the production of a Bailey-Martin is highly probable. We congratulate Mr. White on the vigour and vitality of his novel.’

The Scotsman.—‘When it is remembered that this story is told by Mr. Bailey-Martin himself, and with a great air of verisimilitude, it will be seen how able the book is as a piece of literature.... It will interest and entertain every one who takes it up.’

The Times.—‘All the stories are told by a man whose heart and soul are in his profession of literature.’

The Morning Post.—‘The discriminating will not fail to recognise in the tales composing this volume workmanship of a very high order and a wealth of imaginative fancy that is, in a measure, a revelation.’

The AthenÆum.—‘The appearance of Terminations will in no way shake the general belief in Mr. Henry James’s accomplished touch and command of material. On the contrary, it confirms conclusions long since foregone, and will increase the respect of his readers.... With such passages of trenchant wit and sparkling observation, surely in his best manner, Mr. James ought to be as satisfied as his readers cannot fail to be.’

The Daily News.—‘Mr. James is a critic of life rather than a maker of stories; his appeal is more to the intellect than to the imagination. Terminations is a collection of four stories written with that choiceness and conciseness of phrase that distinguishes the work of the literary artist.... The Altar of the Dead is more mystic and imaginative. Mr. James finds phrases that express incomparably well the more spiritual longings of our nature, and this story is full of tender suggestiveness.’

The Pall Mall Gazette.—‘What strikes one, in fact, in every corner of Mr. James’s work is his inordinate cleverness. These four tales are so clever, that one can only raise one’s hands in admiration. The insight, the sympathy with character, the extraordinary observation, and the neat and dexterous phrasing—these qualities are everywhere visible.’

The Scotsman.—‘All the stories are peculiar and full of a rare interest.’

The Manchester Guardian.—‘... But with The Altar of the Dead it is far otherwise. To attempt to criticise a creation so exquisite, so instinct with the finest and purest human feeling, so penetrated with the fastidious distinction of a sensitive spirit, would indeed be superfluous, if not impertinent. On its own lines, we know of no more beautiful, truer prose poem in the English language, and to have written it is to have formulated a claim to recollection which we do not think will be lightly set aside.’

The National Observer.—‘Clever characterisation, natural dialogue, moral sanity, and keen observation and knowledge of the world.... The minor characters are as diverse as they are numerous, and there is not a lay figure in the book.’

The Daily News.—‘Herbert Vanlennert is good throughout. The analysis of the hero’s character is excellent. The story is crowded with minor characters, all clearly individualised and seen in nice relation to their surroundings. There is much power of observation, much knowledge of life and art displayed throughout.’

The Pall Mall Gazette.—‘A piece of life and a work of art.... Mr. Keary’s men and women are solid all through. He is as honest in his presentation of life as Mr. Gissing, but he is more pointed and wittier; he is less witty than Mr. Meredith, but he is more responsible.... Mr. Keary’s work stands out as a very brilliant piece of honest, knowledgable, wise artistry. We say it deliberately, that there are very few novels of our time that bear so unmistakably the grip of the master-hand as Herbert Vanlennert.’

The St. James’s Gazette.—‘A novel like this helps us at once to understand, to judge, and to enjoy life; and that is to say that he has written a novel of the kind that only the great novelists write. From time to time there comes a new novel marked by a kind and degree of excellence that compels praise of an emphatic kind. There need be no hesitation about deciding that Herbert Vanlennert is such a book.’

The Review of Reviews.—‘In Herbert Vanlennert indeed is a whole little world of living people—friends and acquaintances whom it is not easy to forget.’

The Sketch.—‘Full of cleverness and a legitimate realism. Of two of the most strongly marked and skilfully drawn characters, one is Maynard, the artist of genius; the other, a striking contrast to Maynard, is Bernard, who passes a serene existence in the study of metaphysics. Very charming and interesting are Mr. Keary’s bright and vivid descriptions of English country life and scenery in Derbyshire.’

St. Paul’s.—‘The book contains much clever writing, and is in many respects a strong one.’

Black and White.—‘There is abundance of skilfully drawn characters and brilliantly sketched incidents, which, once read, cannot be forgotten.’

The Scotsman.—‘Mr. Keary, even when he is treading on delicate ground, writes with circumspection and cleverness.’

The Bradford Observer.—‘It is a fine piece of art, and should touch its readers to fine issues.’

The Manchester Courier.—‘The book is most interesting, and embodies a great deal of careful work, besides some very plain speaking.’

The Literary World.—‘The novel is marked by great strength, which is always under subjection to the author’s gift of restraint, so that we are made to feel the intensity all the more. Pathos and humour (in the true sense) go together through these chapters; and for such qualities as earnestness, insight, moral courage, and thoughtfulness, The Years that the Locust hath Eaten stands out prominently among noteworthy books of the time.’

The Daily News.—‘Bears out to the full the promise given by Joanna Traill, Spinster. The author has a genuine sense of humour and an eye for character, and if she bids us weep at the tragedy of life and death, she makes us smile by her pleasant handling of human foible and eccentricities.’

The Standard.—‘A worthy successor to Joanna Traill, Spinster. It is quite as powerful. It has insight and sympathy and pathos, humour, and some shrewd understanding of human nature scattered up and down its pages. Moreover, there is beauty in the story and idealism.... Told with a humour, a grace, a simplicity, that ought to give the story a long reign.... The charm of the book is undeniable; it is one that only a clever woman, full of the best instincts of her sex, could have written.’

The Review of Reviews.—‘It has all the charm and simplicity of treatment which gave its predecessor (Joanna Traill, Spinster) its vogue.’

The Pall Mall Gazette.—‘The book should not be missed by a fastidious novel-reader.’

The Court Journal.—‘The moral of the book is excellent; the style strong and bold.’

The Scotsman.—‘The story is well told, and a vein of humour serves to bring the pathos into higher relief.’

The Manchester Guardian.—‘It is sincere and conscientious, and it shows appreciation of the value of reticence.’

The Manchester Courier.—‘The book is full of delicate touches of characterisation, and is written with considerable sense of style.’

The Glasgow Herald.—‘Worked out with great skill and success.... The story is powerfully told.’

The Liverpool Mercury.—‘The story is told with sympathy and pathos, and the concluding chapters are touching in the extreme.’

The Birmingham Gazette.—‘A sad story beautifully written, containing pure thoughts and abundant food for reflection upon the misery which exists in the world at the present day. The tale is particularly pathetic, but it is true in character. It will be read with interest.’

The Leeds Mercury.—‘Full of powerful situations.’

The Speaker.—‘Mrs. Lynn Linton commands the respect of her readers and critics. Her new story, In Haste and at Leisure, is as powerful a piece of writing as any that we owe to her pen.’

The St. James’s Budget.—‘A thorough mistress of English, Mrs. Lynn Linton uses the weapons of knowledge and ridicule, of sarcasm and logic, with powerful effect; the shallow pretences of the “New Woman” are ruthlessly torn aside.’

The Literary World.—‘Whatever its exaggerations may be, In Haste and at Leisure remains a notable achievement. It has given us pleasure, and we can recommend it with confidence.’

The Court Journal.—‘The book is a long but brilliant homily and series of object-lessons against the folly and immorality of the modern craze of the most advanced women, who rail against men, marriage, and maternity. The book is immensely powerful, and intensely interesting.’

The Daily Graphic.—‘It is an interesting story, while it is the most tremendous all-round cannonade to which the fair emancipated have been subjected.’

The World.—‘It is clever, and well written.’

The Graphic.—‘It is thoroughly interesting, and it is full of passages that almost irresistibly tempt quotation.’

The St. James’s Gazette.—‘It is a novel that ought to be, and will be, widely read and enjoyed.’

The Globe.—‘It is impossible not to recognise and acknowledge its great literary merit.’

The Glasgow Herald.—‘In Haste and at Leisure is a striking and even brilliant novel.’

The Manchester Courier.—‘In this cruelly scientific analyses of the “New Woman,” Mrs. Lynn Linton writes with all the bitterness of Dean Swift. The book is one of remarkable power.’

The Saturday Review.—‘Every page of it is worth reading. The author sets herself to write a fascinating book, and, in our opinion, has undoubtedly succeeded.’

The World.—‘There are good things in this novel; excellent character-drawing, some forcibly realistic chapters in the life of a common soldier.’

The Daily News.—‘The story is skilfully constructed, and will certainly add to Miss Robinson’s reputation.’

The Daily Chronicle.—‘Miss Robinson writes but little, and writes that little carefully.... Herein also is Miss Robinson true to life, and not false to art.’

The Realm.—‘The story is powerfully written. It is worth reading.’

The Standard.—‘All the vicissitudes of Treganna’s career are interesting, and are vividly told.’

The Lady.—‘A story of exceptional power and absorbing interest, earnest, forcible, intensely human, and of high literary merit.’

The Observer.—‘The book is very ably written, and it is well worth reading.’

The Globe.—‘There are in this book much power of observation, a relentless truthfulness, and a recognition of the value of detail. It should enchain the attention of the most callous reader.’

The Sunday Times.—‘A remarkably clever sketch of a man’s life and character.... The literary workmanship is good without being laboured.... We wish it the appreciation, not only of those who can distinguish good literature, but of those who prefer the good from the bad.’

Black and White.—‘An original plot vigorously treated.’

The Daily Graphic.—‘The whole story of the relations between Joseph Treganna and Fanny Star is very human, and handled with a breadth and understanding which very few women novelists of the day could hope to rival, while the gradual abandonment by the man of the outposts whereon he has planted his colours is admirable in its inevitableness.’

Woman.—‘A superb novel, strong and full of life, packed with observation and humour of the deep subcutaneous sort.’

The Times.—‘Miss Dixon shows herself no ineffective satirist of the shams and snobbishness of society.’

The Academy.—‘No one who reads The Story of a Modern Woman will be likely to gainsay the excellence of its writing, and the genuine talent shown by Miss Dixon.’

The Pall Mall Gazette.—‘A subtle study, written by a woman, about a woman, and from the point of view of a distinctly clever and modern woman herself.... Miss Dixon has scored a great success in the treatment of her novel.’

Vanity Fair.—‘The main thread of the story is powerful and pathetic; but there are lighter touches, wit and humour, and here and there what seem like shadows of people we have seen and known.... In a word, a book to buy, to read, and to enjoy.’

Black and White.—‘The social sketches, with which this little story of modern, literary, fashionable, and Bohemian London is full, are very cleverly touched in.’

The Graphic.—‘Miss Ella Hepworth Dixon has inherited no small share of her father’s literary gifts, and she adds to it a faculty of observation, and a constructive and narrative skill, which are of considerable promise.’

The National Observer.—‘She writes well, and shows not a little power of drawing character, and even of constructing a story.’

The Sketch.—‘Miss Dixon’s style excels in delicate vignettes, full of suggestion, and marked, above all, by that artistic restraint which is such an agreeable contrast to the fluency of the average woman-novel.’

St. James’s Gazette.—‘Miss Hepworth Dixon knows how to write.... She can say what she wants to say in a sound, clear style, which (especially in the descriptive passages) is occasionally very felicitous and expressive. Altogether, A Modern Woman is a work which will better repay reading than most of the novels of the season.’

Illustrated London News.—‘A story of which so much can truthfully be said is a contribution to art as well as to the circulating library, a conjunction which, in these days of British fiction, is surprising.’

The AthenÆum.—‘The characters are exceptionally distinct, the movement is brisk, and the dialogue is natural and convincing.’

The Pall Mall Gazette.—‘Joanna Conway is on distinctly new lines, and it has given us pleasure to follow her spicy, attractive personality through all the phases of her carefully, finely-depicted evolution.’

The National Observer.—‘A remarkably life-like picture of English society. The author is a keen observer. The writing is above the average.’

The Daily Chronicle.—‘An excellent novel. Joanna Conway is one of the most attractive figures in recent fiction. It is no small tribute to the author’s skill that this simple country girl, without beauty or accomplishments, is from first to last so winning a personality. The book is full of excellent observation.’

Black and White.—‘Some pleasant hours may be passed in following the fortunes of Joanna, the charming heroine of M. Hamilton’s A Self-Denying Ordinance. The book is well written, and holds the attention from start to finish. The characters are true to life.’

The Methodist Times.—‘The story retains its interest throughout. It contains some vividly-drawn delineations of character.’

Woman.—‘Contains the finest, surest, subtlest character drawing that England has had from a new writer for years and years past.’

Public Opinion.—‘A well written and fascinating novel. It is a clever sketch of life in its different phases.... “Every personage strikes one as being richly endowed with individuality.”’

The Manchester Courier.—‘A decided success. There are such women as Joanna Conway in the world, though, unfortunately, not so many as are required; but there are few writers of the present day who can do justice to such a character, so poetical, and yet so practical.... There is humour in the book: the scene is chiefly in Ireland, and who can truly write of Ireland without humour? but the greatest charm is in the wonderful tenderness, in the womanly chivalry which renders so true the title of a self-denying ordinance.’

The Times.—‘Ably conceived, and ably-written stories.... Mr. Frank Harris has proved himself at once a subtle and effective writer of fiction.’

The National Observer.—‘Mr. Harris’s work leaves on the mind a vivid impression. All the stories in the volume are well written and admirably constructed.’

The Academy.—‘Page after page glows with masterly invention, tender pathos, excellent wit: attributes belonging to the magicians of fiction. Its cleverness is often near akin to absolute genius; the dexterity of the writer evokes not only surprises, but rare pleasure.’

The Pall Mall Gazette.—‘The characters are clearly defined and combined with great skill; they breathe genuineness and truth. There is force and pathos, too, in the story of Bancroft and Loo Conklin.’

The Review of Reviews.—‘There is a force and a charm, a vividness and an originality about these tales which give them a high, if not the highest, place in the literature of that kind which has been produced in the last few years, Not only is there a genius in the presentation of the human types which are described, but they display a closeness of observation and a keenness of insight into the heart of things which only those who have studied western civilisation in the making can appreciate.’

The Westminster Gazette.—‘The stories are masterpieces. They grip like life. And they live with one after, as living realities.’

The Sketch.—‘There is good workmanship in Mr. Harris’s volume, shows not merely in the vigorous story-telling. The inner idea in the tales is carefully wrought, and it will find a response among all readers who love sincerity.’

The Bookman.—‘Elder Conklin is a masterly picture of heroism and paternal love, of rare intensity and refinement, co-existing with capacities for hideous selfishness and cruelty.’

The Glasgow Herald.—‘Mr. Harris’s excellent stories may be heartily recommended to all.’

The Times.—‘In a sense this novel is belated, being a straggler from the procession of books more or less directly concerned with the New Woman. This is a pity, for it is perhaps the best of the novels that have vindicated or mocked at that tiresome female.... Still it may be allowed that here we meet with less cant, less rancour, less prurience, less affectation of omniscience, more genuine philosophy, and a more careful style and more real literary power than in any other novel of the same school.’

The AthenÆum.—‘The character-drawing is distinctly good. All the personages stand out well defined with strongly marked individualities.’

The Morning Post.—‘Clytie is made undeniably sympathetic while the author’s pictures of Bohemian life are bright and graphic.’

The Pall Mall Gazette.—‘The merit of the book lies in the description of the life of Clytie Davenant (the heroine) as an artist in London, of her friendship with Kent, her wooing by Thornton Hammerdyke, and the struggles of her married life. All this is portrayed, not in the grand style, but soberly, truthfully, and on the whole effectively.’

The Daily Chronicle.—‘This clever and somewhat audacious story.... We congratulate W. J. Locke, and shall be surprised if the reception accorded this book is not such as to cause him to congratulate himself.’

The Review of Reviews.—‘Here is a tale of women’s life in London in the present year, of varied societies, of a husband’s brutality, and of a woman’s fidelity, told with restraint, power, and originality. It is certainly one of the novels which mark a beginner out for attention.’

Vanity Fair.—‘After long course of flaccid, nerveless books that seem to have no raison d’Être, it is refreshing to find a well-written novel whose characters seem “hewn from life,” and act as men and women really act.’

The Scotsman.—‘The story never drags and can be read from end to end. It seems to be a first work, and in its strength and vigour gives good promise for the future. The workmanship is careful and conscientious, while the characterisation is broad, human, and natural.’

The Manchester Guardian.—‘In depicting the friendship between Clytie and Kent the author shows both power and subtlety, and may fairly claim to have given us something new, for the portrayal of such a relationship between a man and a woman standing on an equal intellectual level has not been successfully attempted before.’

The Saturday Review.—‘The powerfully dramatic scene in the dancing rooms at Cairo would alone make the book worth reading. The humour, too, peculiar to himself is not lacking in Mr. Hichens’s novel. It is undoubtedly an artistic success.’

The Guardian.—‘There is no possible doubt as to the cleverness of the book. The scenes are exceeding powerful.’

The Graphic.—‘The story embodies a study of remarkable subtlety and power, and the style is not only vivid and picturesque, but in those passages of mixed emotion and reflection, which strike what is, perhaps, the characteristic note of late nineteenth century prose literature, is touched with something of a poetic charm.’

The Standard.—‘The setting of the book is vivid, and the effect of silence well imagined, so that the strange little drama goes on, and the reader watches it with an interest that does not suffer him to consider its absurdity.’

The Daily Chronicle.—‘It treats an original idea with no little skill, and it is written with a distinction which gives Mr. Hichens a conspicuous place amongst the younger story-tellers who are really studious of English diction.... It is marked out with an imaginative resource which has a welcome note of literature.’

The Daily Graphic.—‘A profoundly impressive study in psychology. The descriptions of the shadier side of Egyptian life are fresh and vivid; indeed, Mr. Hichens has a rare power of stimulating the reader’s imagination until it fills in what no one can write, and thus helps to create a vivid picture.’

The Scotsman.—‘It is no doubt a remarkable book. If it has almost none of the humour of its predecessor (The Green Carnation), it is written with the same brilliancy of style, and the same skill is shown in the drawing of accessories. Mr. Hichens’s three characters never fail to be interesting. They are presented with very considerable power, while the background of Egyptian life and scenery is drawn with a sure hand.’

The Spectator.—‘Several of his types are painted in with a fine combination of breadth of effect and wealth of significant detail.... Certainly a book which has not merely cleverness, but real vitality.’

The Speaker.—‘A novel of such remarkable merit, and written with such easy mastery of style. From first to last this striking and powerful story maintains a high level of excellence, betokening no ’prentice hand. It is a story teeming with humour and pathos, instinct with the irony of human fate, and quick to apprehend the subtle twists and inconsistencies of human character. Above all, it is deliciously original ... and told with great spirit, humour, and dramatic vigour. A vivid picture of a side of life upon which little light has been cast by our novelists since Dickens laid down his pen.’

The Morning Post.—‘On the whole realistic; this presentment of Holland in London has certain impressionist touches that are decidedly effective.... All the tragedy of the book centres in the figure of Peter van Eijk, a creation which says much for the author’s imaginative powers.’

The Daily Telegraph.—‘A singular little novel, which has so undeniable a power of its own.’ (Mr. W. L. Courtney.)

The Globe.—‘The literary treatment is fresh and impressive.... The author shows skill in all its characterisations, his mastery of Dutch idiosyncrasy being obviously complete.’

The Daily Chronicle.—‘One does not care to put the book down till the last page is turned.’

The Westminster Gazette.—‘Vivid in portraiture, vivacious in manner.... The combination of close observation and grim sardonic humour gives the book a decided charm....The pathetic figure of Peter is drawn with a tenderness which indefinitely enlarges our impression of the author’s dramatic possibilities.’

The Weekly Sun.—‘Has the great merit of introducing us to a new world.... What a delightful creation Mrs. de Griendt is. Indeed, I should personally have been glad if we had had more of her. Whenever she appears on the stage she fills it with her presence, and you can see her, hear her, watch her with fascination and incessant interest.... I think the reader will agree with me that I have not exaggerated the literary merit of this exquisitely-described scene.’ (T. P. O’Connor, M.P.)

The Review of Reviews.—‘You will enjoy reading it.’

The Glasgow Herald.—‘A striking and amusing novel.... The author has a pleasant gift of humour, and has shown distinct originality.’

The Aberdeen Daily Free Press.—‘In the publication of this and kindred works, Mr. Heinemann is doing much to maintain the freshness and vigour of our English fiction....He has seldom provided a pleasanter and yet more bracing work than the Drama now before us.... As a mere story it will carry delight to even the most unthinking.’

The Times.—‘Since Mrs. Gaskell wrote her Mary Barton we have seen no more interesting novel on the condition of the working classes. Mr, Tirebuck is thoroughly master of his subject.... A vivid and impressive narrative of the great coal strike of a couple of years ago.’

The Literary World. —‘Every reader anxious to hear of a work that is full of brains and vigour may unhesitatingly enter Miss Grace of All Souls’ upon his list of books worthy to be perused.... Mr. Tirebuck, not content with providing “Grace” for our admiration, has made another claim upon our love by presenting us to Nance Ockleshaw. For her sake alone Miss Grace of All Souls’ should be read, and we hope that the novel will make its way into many a home, there to be considered with all the care that is due to it.’

The World.—‘The most remarkable contribution made by fiction to the history of the working classes since Mary Barton, and it has a wider range and import of deeper gravity. It appeals directly to the thoughtful among readers, those who care to learn, on the object-lesson plan, the facts and aspects of life among the multitudes, with whom they are brought into actual contact. The girl who is its central figure is an original and very attractive character.’

The Daily Chronicle.—‘An uncommonly well-told story, interesting from first to last. Mr. Tirebuck has drawn a truly delightful character in the miner’s wife; indeed, the whole family might well have been sketched straight from the life. It is difficult to make a work of fiction at once instructive and entertaining, but Mr. Tirebuck has done it in Miss Grace of All Souls’.’

The Pall Mall Gazette.—‘An admirable piece of work. Here is realism in its proper proportions: the rude, harsh, Methody life of the northern miner engraved in all its essentials. Mr. Tirebuck manages to illustrate the conditions of miners’ lives for us with complete fidelity. Not a touch of the humour, the pathos, the tragedy, the grime, the sin, and the ideals is lacking.... Mr. Tirebuck has done his work to perfection. The story is not a moral tract, but a work of art of great significance.’

The British Weekly.—‘Mr. Tirebuck is a practised and powerful novelist, and in this story he has taken us right inside the heart of the poor. His description of the collier’s wife is wonderful work.’

The Manchester Guardian.—‘As a picture of working men and women, instinct as it is with knowledge, sympathy, passion, and conviction, we have seldom, if ever, read anything so good.’

The Manchester Courier.—‘The character of Miss Grace reminds the reader of the heroine of Charles Kingsley’s Westward Ho.’

The AthenÆum.—‘Told with a force and directness that hold the reader’s attention throughout.... A stirring and interesting novel.’

The Academy.—‘As a study of character, the work is admirable.’

The Saturday Review.—‘A finely conceived study. The book is true without being sordid—realistic in the better meaning of the word; and we have read it with the greatest interest and some stirrings of emotion.’

The National Observer.—‘The strong and true spirit of the husband gives an ennobling study of humanity worth many plots. Miss Sergeant has risen to her earlier level in this book, a fine study of character, and it is only just to say that it is also strong in detail.’

The World.—‘A work to which the much-used adjective “beautiful” may be applied with full intention and strict justice.‘

The Daily Chronicle.—‘Miss Sergeant has given her best matter, treated in her best manner.’

The Daily News.—‘A moving story. In the delineation of the softening of the man’s spirit, and of the mental struggles by which he reaches to forgiveness of his wife, Miss Sergeant shows a fine imagination. This is the best book of Miss Sergeant’s that has come under our notice for some time.’

The Globe.—‘Miss Sergeant follows her hero with a rare grasp of descriptive detail. The concluding chapters of the book reach a high level of pathos, dignity, and convincing humanity.’

Black and White.—‘Gideon Blake is a fine creation and the record of his devotion to the unworthy Emmy, an his attempted expiation of her sins, is forcibly wrought. The closing tragedy, simply treated, is impressive.’

The Literary World.—‘The story is well put together, and has points of more than passing interest and importance.’

The Scotsman.—‘It is in the development of the great theme of a man’s undying constancy to his erring partner, and his eventual forgiveness of her offence, that the author rises to a height of true dramatic power seldom attained in the modern novel. On its merits the story is worthy of a high place in contemporary fiction.’

Birmingham Daily Post.—‘The character of Gideon Blake, the intense and strong-minded husband of the fragile Emmy, is a fine creation, based on the harder types of moral grandeur.’

Bradford Observer.—‘The tale is sincerely and touchingly written. Its characters are veritable flesh and blood.’