on to two volumes. This
juvenile effort is a field of prickles into which none may be advised
to penetrate--I made the attempt lately in cold blood and came back
shuddering, but I had read enough to have the profoundest reason for
declining to tell what the book is about. And yet I have a sentimental
interest in "Better Dead," for it was my first--published when I had
small hope of getting any one to accept the Scotch--and there was a
week when I loved to carry it in my pocket and did not think it dead
weight. Once I almost saw it find a purchaser. She was a pretty girl
and it lay on a bookstall, and she read some pages and smiled, and then
retired, and came back and began another chapter. Several times she
did this, and I stood in the background trembling with hope and fear.
At last she went away without the book, but I am still of opinion that,
had it been just a little bit better, she would have bought it.

CONTENTS

I. ENGAGED?
II. THE S. D. W. S. P.?
III. THE GREAT SOCIAL QUESTION?
IV. WOMAN'S RIGHTS?
V. DYNAMITERS?
VI. A CELEBRITY AT HOME?
VII. EXPERIMENTING?
VIII. A LOST OPPORTUNITY?
IX. THE ROOT OF THE MATTER?
X. THE OLD OLD STORY?

BETTER DEAD

CHAPTER I

When Andrew Riach went to London, his intention was to become private
secretary to a member of the Cabinet. If time permitted, he proposed
writing for the Press.

"It might be better if you and Clarrie understood each other," the
minister said.

It was their last night together. They faced each other in the
manse-parlour at Wheens, whose low, peeled ceiling had threatened Mr.
Eassie at his desk every time he looked up with his pen in his mouth
until his wife died, when he ceased to notice things. The one picture
on the walls, an engraving of a boy in velveteen, astride a tree,
entitled "Boyhood of Bunyan," had started life with him. The horsehair
chairs were not torn, and you did not require to know the sofa before
you sat down on it, that day thirty years before, when a chubby
minister and his lady walked to the manse between two cart-loads of
furniture, trying not to look elated.

Clarrie rose to go, when she heard her name. The love-light was in her
eyes, but Andrew did not open the door for her, for he was a Scotch
graduate. Besides, she might one day be his wife.

The minister's toddy-ladle clinked against his tumbler, but Andrew did
not speak. Clarrie was the girl he gen