the next ten days in the Isaac Walton
Inn, at Dovedale, near Derby, waiting for the fog to lift, and whilst
so waiting wrote the first draft of the play, which he entitled
"Ben-my-Chree," Barrett was enthusiastic about it, and "Ben-my-Chree"
was duly produced for the first time at the Princess Theatre, on May
14, 1888, before a packed house, in which every literary celebrity in
London was present. "The reception was enthusiastic; the next day I
was a famous man." Notwithstanding its great success on the first
night and the splendid eulogies of the press, "Ben-my-Chree" failed to
draw in London, and after running for one hundred nights, at a great
loss to the management, was withdrawn. It was then taken to the
provinces, and was very successful, both there and in America, holding
the stage for seven years. It was afterwards reproduced, with some
success, in London. This play brought Hall Caine in a sum of one
thousand pounds (five thousand dollars), and out of this he bought
himself a house in Keswick, where he remained in residence for four
years. Having now given up journalism, he devoted himself entirely to
fiction and play-writing.

[Illustration: THE ORIGINAL OF KATE IN "THE MANXMAN."]

In 1889, he went with his wife to Iceland and spent two months there,
for the purpose of studying certain scenes which he wished to
introduce into "The Bondman," on which he was then working.
Documentation is as much Hall Caine's care in his novels as it is
Emile Zola's. "The Bondman," which had been begun in March, 1889, at
Aberleigh Lodge, Bexley Heath, Kent, a house of sinister memory--for
Caine narrowly escaped being murdered there one night--was finished in
October, at Castlerigg Cottage, Keswick, and was published by
Heinemann in 1890, with a success which is far from being exhausted
even to-day. In this year Hall Caine experienced a great
disappointment. He had been commissioned by Sir Henry Irving to write
a play on "Mahornet," and had written three acts of it, when such an
outcry was made in the press against Irving's proposal to put
"Mahomet" on the stage, to the certain offence of British Mohammedans,
that Sir Henry telegraphed to him to say that the plan could not be
carried out. He offered to compensate Hall Caine for his labor. "I
refused, however, to accept one penny," says Caine, "and after
relieving my feelings by spitting on my antagonists in an angry
article in 'The Speaker,' I finished the play." It was accepte