Joan of the Hills. By T. B. Clegg. (John Lane.
6s.)—The plot is of an ordinary kind,—a marriage made in haste and repented of at leisure. And the hero is not heroic; courage and, we may say, honour fail him when the need is greatest, though
he has fine qualities, so that he is a man not below the average. The heroine is good, though of herself the would not make the fortune of a novel. Jackie, the son., whom we see for something like twenty years from the time of his entering on the scene very unceremoniously down to the denoiiment of the story, is quite admirable. And the hero must certainly have much of the credit of turning a waif and stray into so fine a young fellow. But Peter Henry, storekeeper and moneylender— Joan's father, we may explain—is the finest creation in the book. He reminds us in a way of David Hamm. But David's hardness was only on the outside ; Peter's is in him, or a great part of him, and yet somehow we do not think the worse of him for it. Perhaps a closer parallel is "Uncle Jethro" in Mr. Winston Churchill's "Coniston?' The scene of the story is for the most part laid in Australia.
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