Led from Afar. By Mallard Herbertson. 2 vols. (Remington and
Co.)—Mr. Herbertson, who is apparently a new writer, cannot be regarded as an important addition to the ranks of contemporary ' novelists. His present story is neither very bad nor very good; it is intolerably tolerable. Ethel Somers jilts an honourable young man, and marries a scoundrel and a card-sharper, who is killed in a duel, but not before he has insulted and shamed his wife by telling her that their marriage has been invalid. After his death, the old lover devotes himself successfully to the disproof of this statement, and the story has the usual ending. The best character in the book is a conventional but not unamusing Yankee, Ephraim C. Slack; but the probabilities of the tale are ruined by an utterly reckless use of coincidences.
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