THY DARK FREIGHT. By Vire Hutchinson. (Hutchinson. 7s. 6d.)—A fishing
village has often lent itself to idyllic treatment in fiction. But Miss Hutchinson makes Mare Is Marsh the scene of a passionate, elemental, and sometimes eerie drama. In following the story of Janetha Forde, a fisherman's daughter, she gives us a study of love thwarted, but unconquerable even in the last dark hour when, to save her daughter-in-law, Janetha kills her own son. We cannot here follow the successive stages of Janetha's disillusion- ment, from her lonely, sensitive childhood that is so admirably described. Miss Hutchinson may still be a little lavish with her colour. But she has gained vastly in poise and restraint, and has produced an essentially convincing portrait. For the
rest, she has a genuine touch of poetry and mysticism, which redeems sordidness and finds the beauty that is latent even in tragedy.
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