Bondman Free. By John Oxenham. (Hurst and Blackett. 6s.) —If
this new book is not quite up to the high level of " Under the Iron Flail," the defect is rather in the tale, or rather, the subject of the tale, than in the telling. Mr. Oxenham has an admirable way, which other novelists might follow with advan- tage, of giving his readers a real story, full of incidents, and acted by people who might have lived. The situation with which it opens is strange. John Bellenger, a bank clerk, told that change to a warmer climate might save an ailing wife, asks his employer for a loan, and when this is refused takes the money. We do not quite understand the means by which he stopped the way against immediate action on the employer's part. Anyhow, he does it; the wife dies, and John Bellenger gives himself up, suffers the penalty, and then sets himself to redeem his position as an honest man. We follow his fortunes with unfailing interest. Possibly the machinery of coincidences is a little too complicated to satisfy a rigorous criticism; but the impression left by the whole is one of genuine life. We feel somewhat puzzled as to the clerical status of the " Very Reverend" who flies so pusillanimously from his plague-stricken parish. His title implies a deanery ; but Deans cannot hold livings. And could the outbreak have been of typhus? Epidemic typhus has not been known in England within the period to which the tale seems to belong.
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