The Mill in the Valley. By "C. E. M." (S.P.C.K.)—This
is a well-written story with a plot which turns on an incident familiar to fiction. A miserly old farmer hoards some five hundred sovereigns ; of these he is robbed by a neighbour, and so robbed that the suspicion falls on a young man, who is the one friend that he has. Hence, a cruel hindrance to a happy love-affair, a trial, and so forth. But there is a certain freshness in some of the circumstances, as in the character of Miss Thornton, familiarly known as the "Young Squire." In the trial scene "C. E. M." goes, we fancy, a little astray. The Counsel for the prosecution would hardly have finished his speech by telling the Jury that "on behalf of his client—his injured client so basely and cruelly robbed in his old age of the little savings amassed by toil and self-denial—he ventured to look with confidence for a favourable verdict." The terms " client " and "favourable verdict" are out of place in a criminal trial.
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