nd_ and have done. Never was such frank adoption
of ideas; and yet no God-fearing, adventure-loving Englishman will
regret it. For all my devotion to R. L. S. I heartily enjoyed this
elaboration of his idea, split me (to quote the thorough-going language
of it)--split me crosswise else! There are forty-seven chapters and a
bloody fight in every one of them, save in the dozen set apart for an
interval of refreshment and romance in the middle. Nay, but was not the
primitive romance a gentler combat, itself, between _Martin Conisby_ and
_Lady Joan Brandon_, marooned, solitary, upon the Island where they did
find (and lose) a treasure even greater than _Black Bartlemy's_? After
having "consorted with pirates and like rogues" and having "endured much
of harms and dangers, as battle, shipwreck, prison and solitude," it
seemed we had sighted happiness at last. But even at the very end things
took an ill turn and our _Martin_, our dear _Martin_, is left stranded
and in sorry plight. Yet must there be a sequel to this. Had he been
left to die on the Island he could not have told us his story thus far;
moreover his last word is that the tale is yet to finish. May I be there
to hear!

* * * * *

I rather think that the lady who elects to write under the name of O.
DOUGLAS did less than justice to the peculiar quality of her own gifts
in calling her last story _Penny Plain_ (HODDER AND STOUGHTON). Because
really such confectionery as this, covered inches deep with the sweetest
and smoothest and pinkest of sugar, could never in these days be bought
for many pennies, while as for "plain"...! Most of the plot (which
really isn't at all the right word for such caramel-stuff) takes place
in a small Scottish town, where lives a family of book-children,
mothered by an elder sister named _Jean_, all of them rich in char-r-rm
but poor in cash. To this town comes, first, a pleasant single lady with
a lord for her brother; secondly an aged man full of money; and, because
the family (and the tale) is what it is, _Jean_, in fewer chapters than
you would easily credit, has clasped the young lord to her breast and is
saying the correct things to the family lawyer of the aged man
concerning the responsibilities of being his heiress. So there you have
it. I doubt whether anything even temporarily unpleasant so much as
suggests itself; for "O. DOUGLAS" has apparently discovered that, in a
world still struggling with s