Walter Lythgoe, the nephew of Erasmus Lythgoe, head of the great Lythgoe Baking Powder, is sent by the firm to Greece to lay in a supply of crude cream of tartar, and is dispatched on his errand with the admonition, “Keep out of all scrapes and complications with women.” Naturally the first thing done by the young man as he arrives on the island of Andros is to fall in love with a fair maiden and to immediately involve himself in the most gratuitous scrapes and astounding complications ever concocted for a novel hero to wriggle out of. Of course the fair maiden whom he loves so artlessly and chivalrously as the servant of the missionary turns out to be a duchess, and equally, of course, the treasure discovered by Walter and his friend in the vault of the monastery is her stolen patrimony. Walter conceives the brilliant scheme of carrying off the bags of gold, and after a series of incredible adventures, in which he and his Scotch crony pit their wits and courage against a jealous Greek lover and some murderous monks, the hero sails out triumphant from the island of Andros with his lady love and a trunk full of treasure. The local coloring of the story is confined to the adjectives “rosy” and “purple,” sprinkled plentifully throughout the book, and despite the often stressed conjunction with the “amphora,” the beautiful Polyxene seems not widely differentiated from any unsophisticated heroine of more familiar climes. In fact, Mr. Horton has not succeeded in galvanizing a very mechanical series of adventures into real vitality by transporting his puppets and wheels to Greece. THE RIVER’S CHILDREN: An Idyl of the Mississippi. By Ruth McEnery Stuart. New York: The Century Co.