'Tween Snow and Fire. By Bartram Mitford. (Heinemann.)— A strong
and vivid story is this tale, another "Romance of the Cape," indeed. We are introduced to three actors in the drama- Carhayes, a farmer; Milne, his cousin ; and Eanewith, the wife of Carhayes—and the plot is summed up in the fact that Milne loves his cousin's wife. Carhayes is a strong, absolutely fearless, and hot-tempered John Bull, rough and overbearing to a high degree ; Milne a cultured, quiet, wise, and essentially well-balanced and self-controlled man, of great courage and nerve; and the wife is everything noble and refined, but apparently gives way without an effort to her love for Milne. Mr. Mitford plays the character of the two men off against each other with admirable effect. A Kaffir war intervenes, and we are carried by the author through stirring scenes and fights, and finally undergo a cruel suspense when the two men are prisoners. Further details we will not, in fairness to such a striking and moving finale, divulge, but we can- not help thinking it a mistake to get rid of Carhayes so summarily after such an arduous search for him,—the others come off too easily to please most readers. As for Mr. Mitford's delineation of a man of the stamp of Carhayes, it is undeniably powerful and lifelike, a far more striking and fascinating character, be it said, than the clever, many-sided Eustace Milne, about whom there is a touch of the fin-de-sidcle. The very simplicity, and the characteristically British courage of Carhayes, are impressed upon us with astonishing reality, and the final happiness of the lovers is to the reader much against the grain. Not that Eustace Milne is devoid of interest ; the contrast between the almost overmastering in- clination of the man and his performances under the spur of naturally manly and noble instincts and a conscience, is well rendered. If we have a fault to find, it is with the love-making and Mrs. Carhayes, whom we can only suppose a woman of no self- respect, though she does her husband no wrong in act. The story would have done equally well without many of the scenes between the two, for the descriptions of Cape life and the war, the Kaffirs, and the adventures of the volunteer mounted corps, are full of vitality and picturesqueness. Certainly, if novelists can turn out romances with such fascinating local colouring as these South African stories, we can well understand the hold which the Cape seems to have on the general imagination.
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