Other
people who shall be nameless have done this sort of thing before,
and, after returning the "borrowed" cash, have enjoyed a stainless
prosperity. But _Michael_, through a motor-car accident, just failed
to put it back in time, and had to do two years. But he had made a
fortune, and on emerging from prison returned to Europe to enjoy
it. There he rescues an innocent English girl from a shady Parisian
environment and marries her. By chance she learns the secret of the
source of his wealth and leaves him. In order to appease her scruples
and recover her he signs away his goods for the benefit of his
father's creditors. What might have been a too sugary conclusion is
saved by a pleasant touch of corrective irony in the very last line,
where his wife expresses a very human satisfaction on finding that her
best necklace was not included in the noble sacrifice. I hope I shall
not be suspected of flattering Mr. Punch's "PATLANDER" if I admire
the excellence of the Canadian section, obviously contributed by Mr.
CROSBIE GARSTIN, who has knocked about most of the world marked red on
the maps. Here his humour and vitality are at their keenest. The rest
of a well-told tale I attribute to Mrs. ALFRED SIDGWICK, with the
exception of a pugilistic episode, for which I imagine that the male
fist was called in to supplement her proper inexperience.

* * * * *

[Illustration: "MY DEAR, I _FELT_ I OUGHT NEVER TO HAVE TAKEN THE
HOLIDAY. SCARCELY HAD I SET FOOT IN MY APARTMENTS WHEN I WAS HANDED A
TELEGRAM FROM SARAH:--'PARROT LAID AN EGG. WIRE INSTRUCTIONS.'"]

* * * * *

I do believe that I have caught a detective napping; a real private
detective, one of the great infallibles of fiction. Mr. J. S.
FLETCHER'S _Exterior to the Evidence_ (HODDER AND STOUGHTON) is one of
those thrills in which any of the characters might have committed the
murder and there is every reason, at times, to suspect that they have
all had a hand in it. Over the moorland there ran a path, and at
a spot known as Black Scar it came perilously near the edge of a
forty-foot drop, with rocks at the bottom. Over this precipice
went _Sir Cheville Stanbury_ at midnight, a very odd circumstance
considering his life-long familiarity with the path. _Weathershaw_,
the great detective called in to investigate the matter on behalf of
one of the suspects, took a line of his own and eventually hit upon
someone