"Certainly." "Stuff, my dear fellow; they never did any thing of the kind. They published--that's all. Is that a heap of stones?" "I think it is." "Well, that's better than a gravel-pit. Cut her right ear. There, we're past it. Amazing bottom, has't she?" "Too much," I said; "but go on with your novel." "Well, my plan is simply this--but make a bet, will you? I give odds. I bet you five to one in fives, that I produce, in a week from this time, a novel called 'Love and Glory,' not of my own composition or any body else's--a good readable novel--better than any of James's--and a great deal more original." "And yet not written by any one?" "Exactly--bet, will you?" "Done," I said; "and now explain." "I will, if we get round this corner; but it is very sharp. Bravo, mare! And now we've a mile of level Macadam. I go to a circulating library and order home forty novels--any novels that are sleeping on the shelf. That is a hundred and twenty volumes--or perhaps, making allowance for the five-volume tales of former days, a hundred and fifty volumes altogether. From each of these novels I select one chapter and a half, that makes sixty chapters, which, at twenty chapters to each volume, makes a very good-sized novel." "But there will be no connexion." "Not much," replied Jack, "but an amazing degree of variety." "But the names?" "Must all be altered--the only trouble I take. There must be a countess and two daughters, let them be the Countess of Lorrington and the Ladies Alice and Matilda--a hero, Lord Berville, originally Mr Lawleigh--and every thing else in the same manner. All castles are to be Lorrington Castle--all the villains are to be Sir Stratford Manvers'--all the flirts Lady Emily Trecothicks'--and all the benevolent Christians, recluses, uncles, guardians, and benefactors--Mr Percy Wyndford, the younger son of an earl's younger son, very rich, and getting on for sixty-five." "But nobody will print such wholesale plagiarisms." "Won't they? See what Colburn publishes, and Bentley, and all of them. Why, they're all made up things--extracts from old newspapers, or histories of processions or lord-mayor's shows. What's that coming down the hill?" "Two coaches abreast"--I exclaimed--"racing by Jupiter!--and not an inch left for us to pass!" "We've a minute yet," said Jack, and looked round. On the left was a park paling; on the right a stout hedge, and beyond it a grass field. "If it weren't for the ditch she could take the hedge," he said. "Shall we try?" "We had better"--I answered--"rather be floored in a ditch than dashed to pieces against a coach." "Lay on, then--here goes!"