"Canwac." By Gilbert Parker, (Hod.
der and Stoughton, 75. 6d.)
There is something loosely knit about this book that hardly suggests the usual pithiness of Sir Gilbert Parker; nor does its slight lack of force and conviction recall hig earlier stuff. For all that it is good story about real human_beings, the supposed supplanter, Tarboc, being the most living person in the hook, The old man's will, by which his heir is only apparentjy cut out, is a variation on the eternal theme of wills and disinheritances. The episode of Car-nae's opposition to the man who is seevetly his father ought to be vastly dramatic, but somehow fails to be dramatic at all. Possibly the fear of melodrama' was in Sir Gilbert's mind. The mother and suppose! father, the half-hearted adventures, and the spirited little heroine all have vital and interest; but the fact remains that the story does not truly grip.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.