been
ruinously involved in a South American revolution, are now further
plunged into the plots of a scoundrelly African magnate and his
conspiratorial gang. For myself, I parted from them all with a feeling
of regret that they had not explained themselves earlier as the
entertaining villains that they turned out to be.

_Manhood End_ (HURST AND BLACKETT) is the title, not very cheery, that
Mrs. HENRY DUDENEY has given to her latest novel, a simple and quite
human story of country vicarage life, told sympathetically, but in
too many words for so slight a theme. The publishers are at the
wholly superfluous pains of urging you as a preliminary to read the
"turn-over of cover." Don't! All you will find there is a synopsis
of the plot, just sufficient to destroy the slender thread of your
interest in its development. And I must record a protest against the
entirely unneeded Prologue, in which total strangers sit round at
a churchyard picnic on the graves of the real protagonists, and
speculate as to their history. The tale itself is placed in Sussex
(why this invidious partiality of our novelists?), the actors being
for the most part clerical. The main interest is centred in the
matrimonial trials of the _Rev. Frederick Rainbird_, whose bride,
having married him in haste, repented at leisure, eloped with the
promising brother of a neighbouring parson, repented more, returned
to domesticity, ran away again, and so on, _da capo_. Perhaps really
these simple but not short annals have a flavour that I have failed
to convey. Mrs. DUDENEY writes easily, but should avoid the snares
of originality. To say of her heroine's morning appearance at the
breakfast table, that she "stood in the tangle of a delicious coffee
smell," may convey an impression, but at a ruinous expense of style.

* * * * *

_Michael Winter_, hero of _The Black Knight_ (HUTCHINSON), by Mrs.
ALFRED SIDGWICK and CROSBIE GARSTIN, had led a nice easy life till
his father's nefarious schemes crashed, bringing down in a common ruin
half the small investors in the country. Left penniless, he changes
his disgraced name and goes out to Canada to make good. There, on the
prairies, he puts in some hard honest work. But, in his haste to be
rich, the _Black Knight_, as they do in chess, after moving straight,
moved obliquely. In order to make a coup out of a Wall Street cinch he
helped himself to the money of the bank of which he was cashier.