can remember, I had enough to keep things going for four
months, and if, at the end of that time, nothing had got itself done, I
must go back bankrupt.

Something did get done, but at a heavy price of labour and
heart-burning. When I began to think of a theme, I found four or five
subjects clamouring for acceptance. There was the story of the Prodigal
Son, which afterwards became 'The Deemster'; the story of Jacob and
Esau, which in the same way turned into 'The Bondman'; the story of
Samuel and Eli, which, after a fashion, moulded itself ultimately into
'The Scapegoat'; and half-a-dozen other stories, chiefly Biblical, which
are still on the forehead of my time to come. But the Cumbrian legend
was first favourite, and to that I addressed myself. I thought I had
seen a way to meet Rossetti's objection. The sympathy was to be got out
of the elder son. He was to think God's hand was upon him. But whom
God's hand rested on had God at his right hand; so the elder son was to
be a splendid fellow--brave, strong, calm, patient, long-suffering, a
victim of unrequited love, a man standing square on his legs against all
weathers. It is said that the young novelist usually begins with a
glorified version of his own character; but it must interest my friends
to see how every quality of my first hero was a rebuke to my own
peculiar infirmities.

[Illustration: MR. HALL CAINE IN HIS STUDY

(_From a photograph by A. M. Pettit_)]

Above this central figure and legendary incident I grouped a family of
characters. They were heroic and eccentric, good and bad, but they all
operated upon the hero. Then I began to write.

[Illustration: MRS. HALL CAINE

(_From a photograph by A. M. Pettit_)]

Shall I ever forget the agony of the first efforts? There was the ground
to clear with necessary explanations. This I did in the way of Scott in
a long prefatory chapter. Having written it I read it aloud, and found
it unutterably slow and dead. Twenty pages were gone, and the interest
was not touched. Throwing the chapter aside I began with an alehouse
scene, intending to work back to the history in a piece of retrospective
writing. The alehouse was better, but to try its quality I read it
aloud, after the 'Rainbow' scene in 'Silas Marner,' and then cast it
aside in despair. A third time I began, and when the alehouse looked
tolerable the retrospective chapter that followed it seemed flat and
poor. How to begin by gripping the interest, how to