tains
to. Though not, perhaps, her strongest gift, it is the one by which
she stands most conspicuously above her contemporaries. The more
credit, then, that she uses it so temperately.

FOOTNOTES:

[A] _The Vagabonds_. By Margaret L. Woods. London: Smith, Elder & Co.

MR. HALL CAINE

August 11, 1894. "The Manxman."

Mr. Hall Caine's new novel _The Manxman_ (London: William Heinemann)
is a big piece of work altogether. But, on finishing the tale, I
turned back to the beginning and read the first 125 pages over again,
and then came to a stop. I wish that portion of the book could be
dealt with separately. It cannot: for it but sets the problem in human
passion and conduct which the remaining 300 pages have to solve.
Nevertheless the temptation is too much for me.

As one who thought he knew how good Mr. Hall Caine can be at his best,
I must confess to a shock of delight, or rather a growing sense of
delighted amazement, while reading those 125 pages. Yet the story is a
very simple one--a story of two friends and a woman. The two friends
are Philip Christian and Pete Quilliam: Philip talented, accomplished,
ambitious, of good family, and eager to win back the social position
which his father had lost by an imprudent marriage; Pete a nameless
boy--the bastard son of Philip's uncle and a gawky country-girl--ignorant,
brave, simple-minded, and incurably generous. The boys have grown up
together, and in love are almost more than brothers when the time comes
for them to part for a while--Philip leaving home for school, while
Pete goes as mill-boy to one Caesar Cregeen, who combined the occupations
of miller and landlord of "The Manx Fairy" public-house. And now enters
the woman--a happy child when first we make her acquaintance--in the
shape of Katherine Cregeen, the daughter of Pete's employer. With her
poor simple Pete falls over head and ears in love. Philip, too, when
home for his holidays, is drawn by the same dark eyes; but stands aside
for his friend. Naturally, the miller will not hear of Pete, a landless,
moneyless, nameless, lad, as a suitor for his daughter; and so Pete sails
for Kimberley to make his fortune, confiding Kitty to Philip's care.

It seems that the task undertaken by Philip--that of watching over his
friend's sweetheart--is a familiar one in the Isle of Man, and he who
discharges it is known by a familiar name.

"They call him the _Dooiney Molla_--literally, the 'man-praiser';