w no
trace of decline in craftsmanship, should have suffered so much taint. I
sincerely hope that the noble work she is now doing with the Red Cross
at the front--where the best wishes of her many friends follow her--may
make more clear the claim that is laid upon her to devote her
exceptional powers as a writer to the higher issues of life and death;
or, at the least, to something cleaner and sweeter than the morbid
atmosphere of her present theme.

* * *

It has been my private conviction that the most depressing and
shuddersome of all natural prospects is the wide expanse of mud and
slime to be found at low water in the estuary of a tidal river. Such
scenes have always been singularly abhorrent to me. Mr. "ADRIAN ROSS"
appears to share this feeling, for out of one of them he has made the
novel and very effective setting for his bogie-tale, _The Hole of the
Pit_ (ARNOLD). It is a story of the Civil Wars, though these have less
to do with the action than the uncivil and very gruesome war waged
between the Lord of Deeping Castle and the Unseen Thing that lived in
the Pit. The Pit itself is real joy. It was covered always by the tide,
but could be distinguished by a darker shadow on the surface of the
sluggish stream, a shadow streaked at times by wavering bands of greyish
slime, strangely agitated.... There were smells, too, dank, sodden,
drowned smells that came in upon the sea mist. Moreover, Deeping Castle
I can only describe as an eligible residence for the immortal _Fat Boy_.
It was built right upon the water, within convenient distance, as the
auctioneers say, of the Pit; and between the two of them your flesh is
made to creep more than you would believe possible. As for the great
scene where the Thing finally gets out of the Pit, and comes slobbering
and sucking round the castle walls--I cannot hope to convey to you the
horror of it. Perhaps you may feel with me that Mr. Ross has been at
times a little too confident that the undoubted thrill of his bogie
would save it from being unintentionally funny. I confess I did laugh
once in the wrong place. But everywhere else I shivered with the fearful
joy that only the best in this kind can produce.

* * *

I remember that I have before this admired the mixture of cheerful
cynicism and dry humour that is the speciality of Mr. MAX RITTENBERG. He
has shown it again in _Every Man His Price_ (METHUEN), but hardly, I
think, to quite the same effect as form