Macleod’s best effort in fiction is _The Starling_. Art demands some abatement of the happy close; there is didactic and explanatory matter that might well be spared; and the episode of the quack is an astounding excrescence. But it is a fine and touching story, and shows that the author possessed the distinctive power of a novelist. The starling was the pet of a little boy called Charlie. It could say, ‘I’m Charlie’s bairn,’ and ‘A man’s a man for a’ that,’ and whistle a few bars of the song, ‘Wha’ll be king but Charlie?’ To feed the bird and hear it speak and sing was the bairn’s delight. He was the only child of his parents, a pious and happy couple, the wife young, the husband a retired sergeant of the army, back at his old trade of shoemaker. The boy died, and there was the bird still repeating its remarks and tunes, and daily becoming dearer to the bereaved parents for Charlie’s sake. One Sunday morning, the starling being dowie, the sergeant hung out its cage at the door, for the sun was shining and the air sweet. Immediately the bird began to pour forth its budget; and a crowd of children gathered about the cage, and the street rang with their delight. Suddenly appeared the minister! at sight of whom the children fled, tumbling over one another and screaming in their fright, so that windows were thrown up, and mothers came flying into the rout, and there was a terrible ado. The Rev. Daniel Porteous, who was on his way to church, was scandalised at such a desecration of the Lord’s day. But what was his horror when he found that the prime offender was the sergeant, one of his elders? To the good couple, who looked up to Mr. Porteous with awe, and whose standing in the congregation was their greatest honour, the minister’s anger was no light matter; the wife was in distraction, the husband grave and puzzled. The clerical decree was that the starling should be destroyed. This the sergeant, with all deference, refused, whereupon the minister went away, uttering vague threats. But as the poor wife seemed to think it their duty to obey, her husband said, ‘If you, that kens as weel as me a’ the bird has been to us, but speak the word, the deed will be allowed by me.’ And he took down the cage, consenting that the other should put an end to the bird. ‘I’m Charlie’s bairn,’ exclaimed the starling. The wife thought that the killing should be the man’s work, but you see that she is beginning to waver, and when her husband lays his hand on the bird, saying, ‘Bid fareweel to your mistress, Charlie,’ she sprang forward with a cry, and prevented the deed. The sergeant was suspended from the eldership for contumacy, and shunned in the village like a leper. But it all comes right in the end. The motive of the tale would seem to verge on the ludicrous; a single false or strained note, and the whole thing were ruined; yet--call it literary skill or the unconscious art of perfect sympathy--the treatment is such that there is no improbability, and for