Sheilah McLeod. By Guy Boothby. (Skeffington and Son.)— One has
come to associate Mr. Guy Boothby with Dr. Nikola,' if not also with Dr. Nikola's ' familiar, the black cat. That very stagey familiar might well have been dispensed with; but Sheilah McLeod suggests in the first place the idea that it would have been ever so much stronger had 'Dr. Nikola' or some equally remark- able incarnation of superhuman or Sherlock Holmes-ish strength figured in it. As it stands, howev er, Sheilah McLeod is a very good Australian story, of a kind that sometimes recalls Rolf Boldrewood and sometimes Robert Louis Stevenson. It is full of love and fire, of murder and hairbreadth escapes. Sheilah, having, no doubt, good Celtic blood in her veins, makes a delightfully romantic heroine, and James Heggarstone, athletic, rebellious, warm-hearted, is just the sort of superior cowboy hero that one might expect to see " raised " in Australia. It seems unnatural, indeed, that such a thoroughly open and above-board young fellow should be attracted by a sneaking scoundrel like Whispering Pete, and so get mixed up with horse-stealing and the murder of a detective. But if this difficulty is got over by the reader, he will take a genuine pleasure in those adventures of Heggarstone in which Sheilah assists him by her daring and her shrewdness. Altogether, Sheilah McLeod—though there is nothing savouring of the supernatural in its attractions—is a well-written and, in parts, strong story.
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