NOVELS.

THE LITTLE BLUE DEVIL.t

T" f°rrnnla on which The Little Blue Devil is founded is as old as the hills. A charming young lady is brought up in the belief that she is not only an heiress but a peeress in her own right. When the rightful heir turns up she dislikes, quarrels with, falls in love with, and ultimately marries him. But if the theme is old, Miss Maekellar and Miss Bedford have contrived to decorate it with so much attractive embroidery that its hackneyed character is effectually disguised. For one thing we never remember to have read a book in which the * (1) Captain Cartwright and iii, Labrador Journal. Edited by Charlet;

Wendell Townsend, M.D. London, Williams and Norgato. net.I.---(2) Through Traekleue Labrador. By T. Reeketh Prichard. London, W. Heine- Mann. 1.158. net.]

Tbo Little 13itta Devi!. By Dorothea Idackellar and Ruth Bedford. London : Alston Rivers, No.]

scene was more frequently shifted. It is like witnessing one of the old panoramas, such as the present writer remembers at the Polytechnic in the palmy days of Pepper's ghost. We start in Paris, then move on to the Mediterranean, Egypt, New Zealand, Australia,

California, the States ; then back to Australasia and Thursday Island; then back again to Europe and all over

it; a London season brings things to a crisis, but the

clenoilment takes place in Australia. And these kaleidoscopic changes of scene are only equalled by the number of callings

followed in rapid succession by our amazing hero, Antoine-

Hugues-Philippe St. Croix, alias Tony, the heir to the barony of Trent. Deserted by his ruffianly father at the age of ten,

he began as a cabin-boy on a fruit-boat in the Levant. Then for a while he was at the Mission school at Smyrna. Next, after a brief interlude, we find him as a boot-boy at a Cairo hotel. Then follow a couple of years on New Zealand cattle stations and timber camps ; months of droving in Australia; ranch and factory work in the States ; service in the merchant marine; and employment as a chauffeur and motor agent in every country in Europe. The foregoing is by no means a.

complete record of the multifarious experiences of the much- travelled and much-enduring Tony between the ages of ten and twenty. For example, it omits his sojourn under the kindly roof of those good Samaritans, Professor Straine, of Philadelphia, and his wife Alison, who took him in when be

was a half-starved waif with a broken thigh, nursed him back

to health, and treated him like a son until his restless spirit drove him forth again on his odyssey. This episode is of significance, as it is the only occasion in the course of his chequered upbringing on which Tony is brought within the range of domestic influences and treated with gentleness as well as consideration. His mother died when he was a child; be was early embittered by distrust of a vicious and callous father ; be had lived for the most part with grown men, many of

whom were rough and brutal; he had been warned to put no faith in womankind, and up to this point he

had maintained a fierce independence which only gradually gave way to the persistent and disinterested kindness of

the Professor and his wife. In the rebound Tony lapses into a fit of precarious calf-love, and the situation threatens to become mawkish, but it is saved by Tony's flight. We have not space to follow him in all the phases of his diversified progress, in his thirst for knowledge, his passion for work, hie tragic but transient love affairs in the South Seas and in Italy, or his quixotic resolve to restore his cousin Pamela to the

position from wbieh be had dislodged her by disappearing in the Australian desert. It is enough to say that the claims of poetic justice are ultimately satisfied in a way which recoups Tony for all his early sufferings. In spite of its restlessness there is some attempt at character development in the story ;

but its chief attraction resides in what may be called the refined spirit of melodrama which informs the narrative, the charm of the descriptions of Australian and New Zealand scenery, and the unfaltering and indomitable spirit of the hero.