12 FEBRUARY 1887, Page 25

Snore-Bound at Eagle's. By Bret Harts. (Ward and Downey.)— The

hero of this story is a " road-agent" (as they call a highwayman in the West) of a very heroic type indeed,—a Claude Duval, with the gayest spirits and best manners conceivable. He is wounded in the exercise of his profession, and takes shelter in the house of a passenger on the mail which he hag just robbed, an inopportune meeting being prevented by the snowstorm which isolates the house from all the rent of the world. It will easily be understood that Bret

Haste, with his admirable power of reproducing Western ways of speech and thought, makes a very entertaining story out of these circumstances. Colonel Clinch is a particularly good study ; and John Hall, with his Eastern ways, makes a capital contrast. But surely the story might have been told quite as effectively without introducing the element of wandering affections in both John Hall and his wife.