21 SEPTEMBER 1895, Page 24

Into the Highways and Hedges. By F. F. Montresor. (Hutchinson

and Co.)—This is a strange story, but, for all its strangeness, most distinctly effective. Margaret Deane is " converted " by a revivalist preacher, as we suppose he would be called, though the description is commonplace for so very remarkable a personage as Barnabas Thorpe. She goes with him to share his work, and becomes, to protect her good name, nominally his wife. That is a situation that has an unlikely appearance, but it is worked out into a powerful story. Margaret, meanwhile, has another lover of the worldly kind, a man for whom she has no thought of interest, but who has a great deal to do with her fate. These two, the preacher into whose heart, first wholly occupi d with zeal, love creeps unawares, and the man of the world, whose life is altogether on a lower plane, but who has generous impulses of his own, make a very striking contrast. We must not forget to mention another vigorous sketch in Tom Thorpe, Barnabas's crippled brother.