In the Kingdom of Kerry, and other Stories. By B.
M. Croker. (Chatto and Windus.)—The first of these seven stories is perfect in its way. Mary Shandhan is of the best type of Irish girl, witty, beautiful, with a tender heart, but proud as a Spartan boy to hide the wound. Her lover is of a good sort, but human, for he cannot stand against the managing mother who will have him marry a woman "up to forty-five, as plain as a heap of stones, and as cross as a weasel." And then the deliverance that sets these victims of circumstances free is admirably managed. " Old Lady Ann " is a pathetic story of decayed gentility, and " Tim Brady's Boots" a powerful bit of tragedy. In "The First Comer" and two other of the stories there is the element of the preternatural, " The Red Woollen Necktie " being the most weird of all. But these things are naught if they are invented ; if they are true, or at least veracious, narratives of experience, they are profoundly interesting. " Jack Straw's Castle " is a ghastly tale of tyranny and vengeance.
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