weeks in all. H.C." It is an excellent piece
of work, but Caine regrets now that he threw away on a book of this
kind all his knowledge of his subject. "_I_ could have written _the_
Life of Coleridge," he says.

"A Son of Hagar" produced three hundred pounds (fifteen hundred
dollars), and has now achieved an immense success, but its reception
at the time was a feeble one. Hall Caine ground his teeth and clenched
his fist and said: "I will write one more book; I will put into it all
the work that is in me, and if the world still remains indifferent and
contemptuous, I will never write another." In the meanwhile he had
decided to follow Rossetti's advice, to write a Manx novel; and having
thought out the plot of "The Deemster," went to the Isle of Man to
write it. It was written in six months, in one of the lodging-houses
on the Esplanade at Douglas, in a fever of wounded pride. "I worked
over it like a galley-slave; I poured all my memories into it," he
says. In the meanwhile he maintained his family by journalism, being
now connected with the best papers in London. "The Deemster" was sold
for one hundred and fifty pounds (six hundred dollars), the serial
rights having produced four hundred pounds (two thousand dollars). He
would be glad to-day to purchase the copyright back for one thousand
pounds. He had great faith in this book.

"Long after we are both dead," he said to his publisher, when they
were discussing terms, "this book will be alive." "I was indifferent
to its reception," he relates; "I said, that if the public did not
take it, that would only prove its damnable folly," Its reception was
immense, and "then began for me something like fame."

THE BEGINNING OF PROSPERITY.

[Illustration: INTERIOR OF "THE COTTAGE BY THE WATER-TROUGH," KIRKNEO,
NEAR RAMSEY, ISLE OF MAN, WHERE LIVED "BLACK TOM," THE GRANDFATHER OF
PETE, IN "THE MANXMAN."]

Offers came in from all sides; the little house in Kent, where he was
then living, became the pilgrimage of the publishers. Irving read the
book in America, and seeing that there was here material for a
splendid play, with himself in the part of the Bishop, hesitated about
cabling to the author. In the meanwhile Wilson Barrett had also read
the book, and had telegraphed to Kent to ask Hall Caine to come up to
London to discuss its dramatization. Hall Caine started, but was
forced to leave the train at Derby because a terrible fog rendered
travelling impossible. He spent