s that, as the old-fashioned people
like her mother realise, men are essentially hunters and "won't bag
the game if it perches on their fists." I wonder! But _Freddy_ got
a better man--the diffident elderly man who was waiting round the
corner. In fact, _Freddy_ is rather a sport, and if Mrs. DELAND
intended her as a tract for the times, in the manner of Mrs. HUMPHRY
WARD, her shot has miscarried--at least so far as I am concerned.

* * * * *

[Illustration: FORCE OF HABIT.

HOW AN ESCAPED PRISONER OF WAR BETRAYED HIMSELF.]

* * * * *

_Edmund Layton_, thick in the arm and at times, be it confessed,
thick in the head, was so thoroughly in love with _The Bright Eyes of
Danger_ (CHAMBERS), and the brighter eyes of _Charlotte Macdonell_,
Jacobitess, that in the rousing days of the YOUNG PRETENDER he not
only lightly risked his life when his lady was in need, but more than
once went out of his way to make things quite unnecessarily hazardous
for himself, when I or any other of his more canny Hanoverian friends
was longing to give him warning. For instance, when that taking
villain, _Philip Macdonell_, after beating him in the race for the
French treasure buried in the sands of Spey beside the sunken ship
(_vide_ the frontispiece mystery chart), soon after fell comfortably
into his hands, he had no more discretion than to take him out
to fight a duel; whereon, as we others foresaw, the wily villain
incontinently disappeared and the fun was all to begin again. Maybe
we might forgive him that, for of such staple are good yarns spun,
but why in heaven's name should bold _Edmund Layton_ of Liddesdale
go about to make himself and us miserable with feckless scruples that
ruined the happy ending we had fairly earned? Either he was right to
let CHARLES STUART escape that day in the mist, in return for former
generosity, or he was wrong; and one would have expected him to make
up his mind and there an end, and not fret himself into a pother and
Mr. JOHN FOSTER'S story into a most inartistic anti-climax over such
a subtlety. All the same a rattling good tale, full of hard knocks as
well as bright eyes, and with more than a smack of STEVENSON.

* * * * *

I fancy that I ought perhaps already to know _The Wood-Carver of
'Lympus_ (MELROSE), which, hailing originally from America, seems to
have made many friends over here before reaching m