There was a florist’s near by—in London there always is a florist’s near by—and Judith stood in the little place, among the fanciful straw baskets and the wire frames and the tin boxes of cut flowers and the damp pots of blooming ones, and made her choice. In her slenderness and her gladness she herself had somewhat the poise of a flower, and the delicate flush of her face, with its new springing secret of life, did more to suggest one—a flower just opened to the summer and the sun.

She picked out some that were growing in country lanes then—it was the middle of July—poppies and cornbottles and big brown-hearted daisies. They seemed to her to speak in a simple way of joy. Then she added a pot of ferns and some clustering growing azaleas, pink and white and very lovely. She paid the florist’s wife ten shillings, and took them all with her in a cab. This was not a day for economies. She drove back to her rooms, the azaleas beside her on the seat making a picture of her that people turned to look at. In her hand she carried a folded brown envelope. On the form inside it was written, in the generically inexpressive characters of the Telegraph Department, “Arrive London 2.30. Will be with you at five. Ancram.”

It was ten o’clock in the morning, but she felt that the day would be too short for all there was to do. There should be nothing sordid in her greeting, nothing to make him remember that she was poor. Her attic should be swept and garnished: women think of these little things. She had also with her in the cab a pair of dainty Liberty muslin curtains to keep out the roof and the chimneys, and a Japanese tea-set, and tea of a kind she was not in the habit of drinking. She had only stopped buying pretty fresh decorative things when it occurred to her that she must keep enough money to pay the cabman. As she hung the curtains, and put the ferns on the window-seat and the azaleas in the corners, and the plump, delicate-coloured silk cushions in the angles of her small hard sofa, her old love of soft luxurious things stirred within her. Instinctively she put her poverty away with impatience and contempt. What in another woman might have been a calculating thought came to her as a hardly acknowledged sense of relief and repose. There would be no more of that!

A knock at the door sent the blood to her heart, and her hand to her dusty hair, before she remembered how impossible it was that this should be any but an unimportant knock. Yet she opened the door with a thrill—it seemed that such a day could have no trivial incidents. When she saw that it was the housemaid with the mail, the Indian mail, she took it with a little smile of indifference and satisfaction. It was no longer the master of her delight.

She put it all aside while she adjusted the folds of the curtains and took the step-ladder out of the room. Then she read Philip Doyle’s letter. She read it, and when she had finished she looked gravely, coldly, at the packet that came with it, carefully addressed in the round accurate hand of the clerk who made quill pens in Doyle’s office. She was conscious of an unkindness in this chance; it might so well have fallen last week or next. There was no ignoring it—it was there, it had been delivered to her, it seemed almost as urgent a demand upon her time and thought and interest as if John Church himself had put it into her hand. With an involuntary movement she pushed the packet aside and looked round the room. There were still several little things to do. She got up to go about them; but she moved slowly, and the glow had gone out of her face, leaving her eyes shadowed as they were on other days. She made the cornbottles and the daisies up into little bouquets, but she let her hands drop into her lap more than once, and thought about other things.

Suddenly, with a quick movement, she went over to where the packet lay and took it up. It was as if she turned her back upon something; she had a resolute look. As she broke the wax and cut the strings, any one might have recognised that she confronted herself with a duty which she did not mean to postpone. It would have been easy to guess her unworded feeling—that, however differently her heart might insist, she could not slight John Church. This was a sensitive and a just woman.

She opened letter after letter, reading slowly and carefully. Every word had its due, every sentence spoke to her. Gradually there came round her lips the look they wore when she knelt upon her hassock in St. Luke’s round the corner, and repeated, with bent head,

/* “But Thou, O Lord, have mercy upon us, miserable offenders: Spare Thou them, O Lord, which confess their faults.” */

It seemed to her that in not having loved John Church while he lived nor mourned him in sackcloth when he was dead she had sinned indeed. She was in the midst of preparations that were almost bridal, yet it is quite true that for this man whose death had wrought her deliverance and her joy, her eyes were full of a tender, reverent regret. Presently she came upon a letter which she put aside, with a pang, to be read last of all. It was like Ancram, she thought, to have borne witness to her husband’s worth—he could never have guessed that his letter would hurt her a little one day. She noticed that it was fastened together with a newspaper, by a narrow rubber circlet, and that the newspaper was marked in red pencil. She remembered Ancram’s turn for journalism—he had acknowledged many a clever article to her—and divined that this was some tribute from his pen. The idea gave her a realising sense that her lover shared her penance and was vaguely comforting.

She went through all the rest, as I have said, conscientiously, seriously, and with a troubled heart. Philip Doyle had not been mistaken in saying that they were sincere, and spontaneous. The tragedy of Church’s death had brought out his motives in high relief; it was not likely he could ever have lived to be so appreciated. These were impressions of him struck off as it were in a white heat of feeling. His widow sat for a moment silent before the revelation they made of him, even to her.

Then, to leave nothing undone, Judith opened Ancram’s letter. Her startled eyes went through it once without comprehending a line of its sequence, though here and there words struck her in the face and made it burn. She put her hand to her head to steady herself; she felt giddy, and sickeningly unable to comprehend. She fastened her gaze upon the page, seeing nothing, while her brain worked automatically about the fact that she was the victim of some terribly untoward circumstance—what and why it refused to discover for her. Presently things grew simpler and clearer; she realised the direction from which the blow had come. Her power to reason, to consider, to compare, came back to her; and she caught up her misfortune eagerly, to minimise it. The lines of Ancram’s hostility and contempt traced themselves again upon her mind, and this time it quivered under their full significance. “Happily for Bengal,” she read, “a fool is invariably dealt with according to his folly.” Then she knew that no mollifying process of reasoning could alter the fact which she had to face.

Her mind grew acute in its pain. She began to make deductions, she looked at the date. The corroboration of the newspaper flashed upon her instantly, and with it came a keen longing to tell her husband who had written that article—he had wondered so often and so painfully. All at once she found herself framing a charge.

A clock struck somewhere, and as if the sound summoned her she got up from her seat and opened a little lacquered box that stood upon the mantel. It contained letters chiefly, but from among its few photographs she drew one of her husband. With this in her hand she went into her bedroom and shut the door and locked it.

When the maid brought Sir Lewis Ancram’s card up at five o’clock she found the door open. Mrs. Church was fitting a photograph into a little frame. She looked thoughtful, but charming; and she said so unhesitatingly, “Bring the gentleman up, Hetty,” that Hetty, noticing the curtains and the cushions in Mrs. Church’s sitting-room, brought the gentleman up with a smile.

At his step upon the stair her eyes dilated, she took a long breath and pulled herself together, her hand tightening on the corner of the table. He came in quickly and stood before her silent; he seemed to insist upon his presence and on his outstretched hands. His face was almost open and expansive in its achieved happiness; one would have said he was a fellow-being and not a Lieutenant-Governor. It looked as if to him the moment were emotional, but Mrs. Church almost immediately deprived it of that character. She gave him the right hand of ordinary intercourse and an agreeable smile.

“You are looking surprisingly well,” she said.

If this struck Ancram as inadequate he hesitated about saying so. The words upon his own lips were “My God! how glad I am to see you!” but he did not permit these to escape him either. Her friendliness was too cheerful to chill him, but he put his eyeglass into his eye, which he generally did when he wanted to reflect, behind a pause.

“And you are just the same,” he said. “A little more colour, perhaps.”

“I am not really, you know,” she returned, slipping her hand quickly out of his. “Since I saw you I am older—and wiser. Nearly two years older and wiser.”

The smile which he sent into her eyes was a visible effort to bring himself nearer to her.

“Where have you found so much instruction?” he asked, with tender banter.

Her laugh accepted the banter and ignored its quality. “In ‘The Modern Influence of the Vedic Books,’ among other places,” she said, and rang the bell. “Tea, Hetty.”

“I must be allowed to congratulate you upon that,” she went on pleasantly. “All the wise people are talking about it, aren’t they? And upon the rest of your achievements. They have been very remarkable.”

“They are very incomplete,” he hinted; “but I am glad you are disposed to be kind about them.”

They had dropped into chairs at the usual conversational distance, and he sat regarding her with a look which almost confessed that he did not understand.

“I suppose you had an execrable passage,” Judith volunteered, with sociable emphasis. “I can imagine what it must have been, as far as Aden, with the monsoon well on.”

“Execrable,” he repeated. He had come to a conclusion. It was part of her moral conception of their situation that he should begin his love-making over again. She would not tolerate their picking it up and going on with it. At least that was her attitude. He wondered, indulgently, how long she would be able to keep it.

“And Calcutta? I suppose you left it steaming?”

“I hardly know. I was there only a couple of days before the mail left. Almost the whole of July I have been on tour.”

“Oh—really?” said Mrs. Church. Her face assumed the slight sad impenetrability with which we give people to understand that they are trespassing upon ground hallowed by the association of grief. Ancram observed, with irritation, that she almost imposed silence upon him for a moment. Her look suggested to him that if he made any further careless allusions she might break into tears.

“Dear me!” Judith said softly at last, pouring out the tea, “how you bring everything back to me!”

He thought of saying boldly that he had come to bring her back to everything, but for some reason he refrained.

“Not unpleasantly, I hope?” He had an instant’s astonishment at finding such a commonplace upon his lips. He had thought of this in poems for months.

She gave him his tea, and a pathetic smile. It was so pathetic that he looked away from it, and his eye fell upon the portrait of John Church, framed, near her on the table.

“Do you think it is a good one?” she asked eagerly, following his glance. “Do you think it does him justice? It was so difficult,” she added softly, “to do him justice.”

Sir Lewis Ancram stirred his tea vigorously. He never took sugar, but the manipulation of his spoon enabled him to say, with candid emphasis, “He never got justice.”

For the moment he would abandon his personal interest, he would humour her conscience; he would dwell upon the past, for the moment.

“No,” she said, “I think he never did. Perhaps, now——”

Ancram’s lip curled expressively.

“Yes, now,” he said—“now that no appreciation can encourage him, no applause stimulate him, now that he is for ever past it and them, they can find nothing too good to say of him. What a set of curs they are!”

“It is the old story,” she replied. Her eyes were full of sadness.

“Forgive me!” Ancram said involuntarily. Then he wondered for what he had asked to be forgiven.

“He was a martyr,” Judith went on calmly—“‘John Church, martyr,’ is the way they ought to write him down in the Service records. But there were a few people who knew him great and worthy while he lived. I was one——”

“And I was another. There were more than you think.”

“He used to trust you. Especially in the matter that killed him—that educational matter—he often said that without your sympathy and support he would hardly know where to turn.”

“His policy was right. Events are showing now how right it was. Every day I find what excellent reason he had for all he did.”

“Yes,” Judith said, regarding him with a kind of remote curiosity. “You have succeeded to his difficulties. I wonder if you lie awake over them, as he used to do! And to all the rest. You have taken his place, and his hopes, and the honours that would have been his. How strange it seems!”

“Why should it seem so strange, Judith?”

She half turned and picked up a letter and a newspaper that lay on the table behind her.

“This is one reason,” she said, and handed them to him. “Those have reached me to-day, by some mistake in Mr. Doyle’s office, I suppose. One knows how these things happen in India. And I thought you might like to have them again.”

Ancram’s face fell suddenly into the lines of office. He took the papers into his long nervous hands in an accustomed way, and opened the pages of the letter with a stroke of his finger and thumb which told of a multitude of correspondence and a somewhat disregarding way of dealing with it. His eyes were riveted upon Doyle’s red pencil marks under “his beard grows with the tale of his blunders” in the letter and the newspaper, but his expression merely noted them for future reference.

“Thanks,” he said presently, settling the papers together again. “Perhaps it is as well that they should be in my possession. It was thoughtful of you. In other hands they might be misunderstood.”

She looked at him full and clearly, and something behind her eyes laughed at him.

“Oh, I think not!” she said. “Let me give you another cup of tea.”

“No more, thank you.” He drew his feet together in a preliminary movement of departure, and then thought better of it.

“I hope you understand,” he said, “that in—in official life one may be forced into hostile criticism occasionally, without the slightest personal animus.” His voice was almost severe—it was as he were compelled to reason with a subordinate in terms of reproof.

Judith smiled acquiescently.

“Oh, I am sure that must often be the case,” she said; and he knew that she was beyond all argument of his. She had adopted the official attitude; she was impersonal and complaisant and non-committal. Her comment would reach him later, through the authorised channels of the empty years. It would be silent and negative in its nature, the denial of promotion, but he would understand. Even in a matter of sentiment the official attitude had its decencies, its conveniences. He was vaguely aware of them as he rose, with a little cough, and fell back into his own.

Nevertheless it was with something like an inward groan that he abandoned it, and tried, for a few lingering minutes, to remind her of the man she had known in Calcutta.

“Judith,” he said desperately at the door, after she had bidden him a cheerful farewell, “I once thought I had reason to believe that you loved me.”

She was leaning rather heavily on the back of a chair. He had made only a short visit, but he had spent five years of this woman’s life since he arrived.

“Not you,” she said: “my idea of you. And that was a long time ago.”

She kept her tone of polite commonplace; there was nothing for it but a recognisant bow, which Ancram made in silence. As he took his way downstairs and out into Kensington, a malignant recollection of having heard something very like this before took possession of him and interfered with the heroic quality of his grief. If he had a Nemesis, he told himself, it was the feminine idea of him. But that was afterward.

One day, a year later, Sir Lewis Ancram paused in his successful conduct of the affairs of Bengal long enough to state the case with ultimate emphasis to a confidentially inquiring friend.

“As the wife of my late honoured chief,” he said, “I have the highest admiration and respect for Mrs. Church; but the world is wrong in thinking that I have ever made her a proposal of marriage; nor have I the slightest intention of doing so.”

THE SEATS OF THE MIGHTY. Being the Memoirs of Captain Robert Moray, sometime an Officer in the Virginia Regiment, and afterward of Amherst’s Regiment. 12mo. Cloth, illustrated, $1.50.

For the time of his story Mr. Parker has chosen the most absorbing period of the romantic eighteenth-century history of Quebec. The curtain rises soon after General Braddock’s defeat in Virginia, and the hero, a prisoner in Quebec, curiously entangled in the intrigues of La Pompadour, becomes a part of a strange history, full of adventure and the stress of peril, which culminates only after Wolfe’s victory over Montcalm. The material offered by the life and history of old Quebec has never been utilized for the purposes of fiction with the command of plot and incident, the mastery of local color, and the splendid realization of dramatic situations shown in this distinguished and moving romance. The illustrations preserve the atmosphere of the text, for they present the famous buildings, gates, and battle grounds as they appeared at the time of the hero’s imprisonment in Quebec.

THE TRAIL OF THE SWORD. A Novel. 12mo. Paper, 50 cents; cloth, $1.00.

“Mr. Parker here adds to a reputation already wide, and anew demonstrates his power of pictorial portrayal and of strong dramatic situation and climax.”—Philadelphia Bulletin.

“The tale holds the reader’s interest from first to last, for it is full of fire and spirit, abounding in incident, and marked by good character drawing.”—Pittsburg Times.

THE TRESPASSER. 12mo. Paper, 50 cents; cloth, $1.00.

“Interest, pith, force, and charm—Mr. Parker’s new story possesses all these qualities.... Almost bare of synthetical decoration, his paragraphs are stirring because they are real. We read at times—as we have read the great masters of romance—breathlessly.”—The Critic.

“Gilbert Parker writes a strong novel, but thus far this is his masterpiece.... It is one of the great novels of the year.”—Boston Advertiser.

THE TRANSLATION OF A SAVAGE. 16mo. Flexible cloth, 75 cents.

“A book which no one will be satisfied to put down until the end has been matter of certainty and assurance.”—The Nation.

“A story of remarkable interest, originality, and ingenuity of construction.”—Boston Home Journal.

“The perusal of this romance will repay those who care for new and original types of character, and who are susceptible to the fascination of a fresh and vigorous style.”—London Daily News.

CLEG KELLY, ARAB OF THE CITY. His Progress and Adventures. Uniform with “The Lilac Sunbonnet” and “Bog-Myrtle and Peat.” Illustrated. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50.

It is safe to predict for the quaint and delightful figure of Cleg Kelly a notable place in the literature of the day. Mr. Crockett’s signal success in his new field will enlarge the wide circle of his admirers. The lights and shadows of curious phases of Edinburgh life, and of Scotch farm and railroad life, are pictured with an intimate sympathy, richness of humor, and truthful pathos which make this new novel a genuine addition to literature. It seems safe to say that at least two characters—Cleg and Muckle Alick—are likely to lead Mr. Crockett’s heroes in popular favor. The illustrations of this fascinating novel have been the result of most faithful and sympathetic study.

BOG-MYRTLE AND PEAT. Third edition. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50.

“Here are idyls, epics, dramas of human life, written in words that thrill and burn.... Each is a poem that has an immortal flavor. They are fragments of the author’s early dreams, too bright, too gorgeous, too full of the blood of rubies and the life of diamonds to be caught and held palpitating in expression’s grasp.”—Boston Courier.

“Hardly a sketch among them all that will not afford pleasure to the reader for its genial humor, artistic local coloring, and admirable portrayal of character.”—Boston Home Journal.

“One dips into the book anywhere and reads on and on, fascinated by the writer’s charm of manner.”—Minneapolis Tribune.

THE LILAC SUNBONNET. Sixth edition. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50.

“A love story pure and simple, one of the old-fashioned, wholesome, sunshiny kind, with a pure-minded, sound-hearted hero, and a heroine who is merely a good and beautiful woman; and if any other love story half so sweet has been written this year, it has escaped our notice.”—New York Times.

“The general conception of the story, the motive of which is the growth of love between the young chief and heroine, is delineated with a sweetness and a freshness, a naturalness and a certainty, which places ‘The Lilac Sunbonnet’ among the best stories of the time.”—New York Mail and Express.

“In its own line this little love story can hardly be excelled. It is a pastoral, an idyl—the story of love and courtship and marriage of a fine young man and a lovely girl—no more. But it is told in so thoroughly delightful a manner, with such playful humor, such delicate fancy, such true and sympathetic feeling, that nothing more could be desired.”—Boston Traveller.

THE EXPLOITS OF BRIGADIER GERARD. A Romance of the Life of a Typical Napoleonic Soldier. Illustrated. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50.

There is a flavor of Dumas’s Musketeers in the life of the redoubtable Brigadier Gerard, a typical Napoleonic soldier, more fortunate than many of his compeers because some of his Homeric exploits were accomplished under the personal observation of the Emperor. His delightfully romantic career included an oddly characteristic glimpse of England, and his adventures ranged from the battlefield to secret service. In picturing the experiences of his fearless, hard-fighting and hard-drinking hero, the author of “The White Company” has given us a book which absorbs the interest and quickens the pulse of every reader.

THE STARK MUNRO LETTERS. Being a Series of Twelve Letters written by Stark Munro, M. B., to his friend and former fellow-student, Herbert Swanborough, of Lowell, Massachusetts, during the years 1881-1884. Illustrated. 12mo. Buckram, $1.50.

“Cullingworth, ... a much more interesting creation than Sherlock Holmes, and I pray Dr. Doyle to give us more of him.”—Richard le Gallienne, in the London Star.

“Every one who wants a hearty laugh must make acquaintance with Dr. James Cullingworth.”—Westminster Gazette.

“Every one must read; for not to know Cullingworth should surely argue one’s self to be unknown.”—Pall Mall Gazette.

“One of the freshest figures to be met with in any recent fiction.”—London Daily News.

“‘The Stark Munro Letters’ is a bit of real literature.... Its reading will be an epoch-making event in many a life.”—Philadelphia Evening Telegraph.

“Positively magnetic, and written with that combined force and grace for which the author’s style is known.”—Boston Budget.

ROUND THE RED LAMP. Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50.

“Too much can not be said in praise of these strong productions, that, to read, keep one’s heart leaping to the throat and the mind in a tumult of anticipation to the end.... No series of short stories in modern literature can approach them.”—Hartford Times.

“If Mr. A. Conan Doyle had not already placed himself in the front rank of living English writers by ‘The Refugees,’ and other of his larger stories, he would surely do so by these fifteen short tales.”—New York Mail and Express.

“A strikingly realistic and decidedly original contribution to modern literature.”—Boston Saturday Evening Gazette.

THE ONE WHO LOOKED ON. By F. F. MontrÉsor, author of “Into the Highways and Hedges.” 16mo. Cloth, special binding, $1.25.

“The story runs on as smoothly as a brook through lowlands; it excites your interest at the beginning and keeps it to the end.”—New York Herald.

“An exquisite story.... No person sensitive to the influence of what makes for the true, the lovely, and the strong in human friendship and the real in life’s work can read this book without being benefited by it.”—Buffalo Commercial.

“The book has universal interest and very unusual merit.... Aside from its subtle poetic charm, the book is a noble example of the power of keen observation.”—Boston Herald.

CORRUPTION. By Percy White, author of “Mr. Bailey-Martin,” etc. 12mo. Cloth, $1.25.

“There is intrigue enough in it for those who love a story of the ordinary kind, and the political part is perhaps more attractive in its sparkle and variety of incident than the real thing itself.”—London Daily News.

“A drama of biting intensity, a tragedy of inflexible purpose and relentless result.”—Pall Mall Gazette.

A HARD WOMAN. A Story in Scenes. By Violet Hunt. 12mo. Cloth, $1.25.

“An extremely clever work. Miss Hunt probably writes dialogue better than any of our young novelists.... Not only are her conversations wonderfully vivacious and sustained, but she contrives to assign to each of her characters a distinct mode of speech, so that the reader easily identifies them, and can follow the conversations without the slightest difficulty.”—London AthenÆum.

“One of the best writers of dialogue of our immediate day. The conversations in this book will enhance her already secure reputation.”—London Daily Chronicle.

“A creation that does Miss Hunt infinite credit, and places her in the front rank of the younger novelists.... Brilliantly drawn, quivering with life, adroit, quiet-witted, unfalteringly insolent, and withal strangely magnetic.”—London Standard.

AN IMAGINATIVE MAN. By Robert S. Hichens, author of “The Green Carnation.” 12mo. Cloth, $1.25.

“One of the brightest books of the year.”—Boston Budget.

“Altogether delightful, fascinating, unusual.”—Cleveland Amusement Gazette.

“A study in character.... Just as entertaining as though it were the conventional story of love and marriage. The clever hand of the author of ‘The Green Carnation’ is easily detected in the caustic wit and pointed epigram.”—Jeannette L. Gilder, in the New York World.

THE CHRONICLES OF COUNT ANTONIO. By Anthony Hope, author of “The God in the Car,” “The Prisoner of Zenda,” etc. With photogravure Frontispiece by S. W. Van Schaick. Third edition. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50.

“No adventures were ever better worth recounting than are those of Antonio of Monte Velluto, a very Bayard among outlaws.... To all those whose pulses still stir at the recital of deeds of high courage, we may recommend this book.... The chronicle conveys the emotion of heroic adventure, and is picturesquely written.”—London Daily News.

“It has literary merits all its own, of a deliberate and rather deep order.... In point of execution ‘The Chronicles of Count Antonio’ is the best work that Mr. Hope has yet done. The design is clearer, the workmanship more elaborate, the style more colored.... The incidents are most ingenious, they are told quietly, but with great cunning, and the Quixotic sentiment which pervades it all is exceedingly pleasant.”—Westminster Gazette.

“A romance worthy of all the expectations raised by the brilliancy of his former books, and likely to be read with a keen enjoyment and a healthy exaltation of the spirits by every one who takes it up.”—The Scotsman.

“A gallant tale, written with unfailing freshness and spirit.”—London Daily Telegraph.

“One of the most fascinating romances written in English within many days. The quaint simplicity of its style is delightful, and the adventures recorded in these ‘Chronicles of Count Antonio’ are as stirring and ingenious as any conceived even by Weyman at his best.”—New York World.

“Romance of the real flavor, wholly and entirely romance, and narrated in true romantic style. The characters, drawn with such masterly handling, are not merely pictures and portraits, but statues that are alive and step boldly forward from the canvas.”—Boston Courier.

“Told in a wonderfully simple and direct style, and with the magic touch of a man who has the genius of narrative, making the varied incidents flow naturally and rapidly in a stream of sparkling discourse.”—Detroit Tribune.

“Easily ranks with, if not above, ‘A Prisoner of Zenda.’... Wonderfully strong, graphic, and compels the interest of the most blasÉ novel reader.”—Boston Advertiser.

“No adventures were ever better worth telling than those of Count Antonio.... The author knows full well how to make every pulse thrill, and how to hold his readers under the spell of his magic.”—Boston Herald.

“A book to make women weep proud tears, and the blood of men to tingle with knightly fervor.... In ‘Count Antonio’ we think Mr. Hope surpasses himself, as he has already surpassed all the other story-tellers of the period.”—New York Spirit of the Times.

THE REDS OF THE MIDI. An Episode of the French Revolution. By FÉlix Gras. Translated from the ProvenÇal by Mrs. Catharine A. Janvier. With an Introduction by Thomas A. Janvier. With Frontispiece. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50.

M. FÉlix Gras is the official head of the FÉlibrige, the society of ProvenÇal men of letters, the highest honor in their gift. It is believed that the introduction of his rare talent to our readers will meet with prompt appreciation.

“In all French history there is no more inspiring episode than that with which M. Gras deals in this story: the march to Paris and the doings in Paris of that Marseilles Battalion made up of men who were sworn to cast down ‘the tyrant,’ and who ‘knew how to die.’ His epitome of the motive power of the Revolution in the feelings of one of its individual pleasant parts is the very essence of simplicity and directness. His method has the largeness and clearness of the Greek drama. The motives are distinct. The action is free and bold. The climax is inevitable, and the story has a place entirely apart from all the fiction of the French Revolution with which I am acquainted.”—From Mr. Janvier’s Introduction.

THE GODS, SOME MORTALS, AND LORD WICKENHAM. By John Oliver Hobbes. With Portrait. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50.

“Mrs. Craigie has taken her place among the novelists of the day. It is a high place and a place apart. Her method is her own, and she stands not exactly on the threshold of a great career, but already within the temple of fame.”—G. W. Smalley, in the Tribune.

“Here is the sweetness of a live love story.... It is to be reckoned among the brilliants as a novel.”—Boston Courier.

“One of the most refreshing novels of the period, full of grace, spirit, force, feeling, and literary charm.”—Chicago Evening Post.

“Clever and cynical, full of epigrams and wit, bright with keen delineations of character, and with a shrewd insight into life.”—Newark Advertiser.

“A novel of profound psychological knowledge and ethical import.... Worthy of high rank in current fiction.”—Boston Beacon.

MAELCHO. By the Hon. Emily Lawless, author of “Grania,” “Hurrish,” etc. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50.

“A paradox of literary genius. It is not a history, and yet has more of the stuff of history in it, more of the true national character and fate, than any historical monograph we know. It is not a novel, and yet fascinates us more than any novel.”—London Spectator.

“Abounds in thrilling incidents.... Above and beyond all, the book charms by reason of the breadth of view, the magnanimity, and the tenderness which animate the author.”—London AthenÆum.

“A piece of work of the first order, which we do not hesitate to describe as one of the most remarkable literary achievements of this generation.”—Manchester Guardian.

SLEEPING FIRES. By George Gissing, author of “In the Year of Jubilee,” “Eve’s Ransom,” etc. 16mo. Cloth, 75 cents.

In this striking story the author has treated an original motive with rare self-command and skill. His book is most interesting as a story, and remarkable as a literary performance.

STONEPASTURES. By Eleanor Stuart. 16mo. Cloth, 75 cents.

“This is a strong bit of good literary workmanship.... The book has the value of being a real sketch of our own mining regions, and of showing how, even in the apparently dull round of work, there is still material for a good bit of literature.”—Philadelphia Ledger.

COURTSHIP BY COMMAND. By M. M. Blake. 16mo. Cloth, 75 cents.

“A bright, moving study of an unusually interesting period in the life of Napoleon, ... deliciously told; the characters are clearly, strongly, and very delicately modeled, and the touches of color most artistically done. ‘Courtship by Command’ is the most satisfactory Napoleon bonne-bouche we have had.”—New York Commercial Advertiser.

THE WATTER’S MOU’. By Bram Stoker. l6mo. Cloth, 75 cents.

“Here is a tale to stir the most sluggish nature.... It is like standing on the deck of a wave-tossed ship; you feel the soul of the storm go into your blood.”—N. Y. Home Journal.

“The characters are strongly drawn, the descriptions are intensely dramatic, and the situations are portrayed with rare vividness of language. It is a thrilling story, told with great power.”—Boston Advertiser.

MASTER AND MAN. By Count Leo Tolstoy. With an Introduction by W. D. Howells. 16mo. Cloth, 75 cents.

“Crowded with these characteristic touches which mark his literary work.”—Public Opinion.

“Reveals a wonderful knowledge of the workings of the human mind, and it tells a tale that not only stirs the emotions, but gives us a better insight into our own hearts.”—San Francisco Argonaut.

THE ZEIT-GEIST. By L. Dougall, author of “The Mermaid,” “Beggars All,” etc. 16mo. Cloth, 75 cents.

“One of the best of the short stories of the day.”—Boston Journal.

“One of the most remarkable novels of the year.”—New York Commercial Advertiser.

“Powerful in conception, treatment, and influence.”—Boston Globe.

THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE. An Episode of the American Civil War. By Stephen Crane. 12mo. Cloth, $1.00.

“Mr. Stephen Crane is a great artist, with something new to say, and consequently with a new way of saying it.... In ‘The Red Badge of Courage’ Mr. Crane has surely contrived a masterpiece.... He has painted a picture that challenges comparisons with the most vivid scenes of Tolstoy’s ‘La Guerre et la Paix’ or of Zola’s ‘La DÉbÂcle.’”—London New Review.

“In its whole range of literature we can call to mind nothing so searching in its analysis, so manifestly impressed with the stamp of truth, as ‘The Red Badge of Courage.’... A remarkable study of the average mind under stress of battle.... We repeat, a really fine achievement.”—London Daily Chronicle.

“Not merely a remarkable book; it is a revelation.... One feels that, with perhaps one or two exceptions, all previous descriptions of modern warfare have been the merest abstractions.”—St. James Gazette.

“Holds one irrevocably. There is no possibility of resistance when once you are in its grip, from the first of the march of the troops to the closing scenes.... Mr. Crane, we repeat, has written a remarkable book. His insight and his power of realization amount to genius.”—Pall Mall Gazette.

“There is nothing in American fiction to compare with it in the vivid, uncompromising, almost aggressive vigor with which it depicts the strangely mingled conditions that go to make up what men call war.... Mr. Crane has added to American literature something that has never been done before, and that is, in its own peculiar way, inimitable.”—Boston Beacon.

“Never before have we had the seamy side of glorious war so well depicted.... The action of the story throughout is splendid, and all aglow with color, movement, and vim. The style is as keen and bright as a sword-blade, and a Kipling has done nothing better in this line.”—Chicago Evening Post.

IN DEFIANCE OF THE KING. A Romance of the American Revolution. By Chauncey C. Hotchkiss. 12mo. Paper, 50 cents; cloth, $1.00.

“The whole story is so completely absorbing that you will sit far into the night to finish it. You lay it aside with the feeling that you have seen a gloriously true picture of the Revolution.”—Boston Herald.

“The story is a strong one—a thrilling one. It causes the true American to flush with excitement, to devour chapter after chapter until the eyes smart; and it fairly smokes with patriotism.”—New York Mail and Express.

“The heart beats quickly, and we feel ourselves taking part in the scenes described.... Altogether the book is an addition to American literature.”—Chicago Evening Post.

“One of the most readable novels of the year.... As a love romance it is charming, while it is filled with thrilling adventure and deeds of patriotic daring.”—Boston Advertiser.

“This romance seems to come the nearest to a satisfactory treatment in fiction of the Revolutionary period that we have yet had.”—Buffalo Courier.

“A clean, wholesome story, full of romance and interesting adventure.... Holds the interest alike by the thread of the story and by the incidents.... A remarkably well-balanced and absorbing novel.”—Milwaukee Journal.

Errors deemed most likely to be the printer’s have been corrected, and are noted here. The references are to the page and line in the original.