A Costly Freak. By Maxwell Gray. (Hegan Paul, Trench, Triibnor,
and Co.)—This is an agreeable and ingenious story, and if it is not so ambitious as some previous stories from the same pen, so much the better. The hero of it is George Burroughes, an Anglican rector of the muscular rather than of the Christian type, who is blessed—some of his lay friends think cursed—with a curate who is quite as unworldly as the Vicar of Wakefield, and much more intensely religious. George, although he has a very sprightly cousin who is not at all unwilling, if sufficiently pressed, to marry him, chooses to fall in love with Millie Ray, the curate's daughter, and in this is backed up by the cousin, who includes unselfishness among her virtues. But he has to accuse the curate himself of theft, that poor simple-minded man having found certain bank-notes in the leaves of his Bible, and taken for granted that they bad, as a direct answer to prayer, been sent him by God, to enable him to give his ailing lad Walter a much-needed holiday at the seaside. Here is a very pretty mystery, and the clearing of it up constitutes the plot of A Costly Freak. There are but four characters of any importance in the book,—the curate and the rector, and the two contrasted girls, Maud and Millie,—but they are all admirably drawn. It ought to be quite unnecessary to add that A Costly Fresh is a thoroughly healthy story.
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