In 1896 he published his Romany novel ‘Kriegspiel,’ which did not meet with anything like the success it deserved, although I must say he was himself in some degree answerable for its comparative failure. The origin of the story was this. Shortly after our intimacy I told him that I had written a gipsy story dealing with the East Anglian gipsies and the Welsh gipsies, but that it had been so dinned into me by Borrow that in England there was no interest in the gipsies that I had never found heart to publish it. Groome urged me to let him read it, and he did read it, as far as it was then complete, and took an extremely kind view of it, and urged me to bring it out. But now came another and a new cause for delay in my bringing out ‘Aylwin’: Groome himself, who at that time knew more about Romany matters than all other Romany students of my acquaintance put together, showed a remarkable gift as a _raconteur_, and I felt quite sure that he could, if he set to work, write a Romany story—_the_ Romany story of the English language. He strongly resisted the idea for a long time—for two or three years at least—and he was only persuaded to undertake the task at last by my telling him that I would never bring out my story until he brought out one himself. At last he yielded, told me of a plot, a capital one, and set to work upon it. When it was finished he sent the manuscript to me, and I read it through with the greatest interest, and also the greatest care. I found, as I expected to find, that the gipsy chapters were simply perfect, and that it was altogether an extremely clever romance; but I felt also that Groome had given no attention whatever to the structure of a story. Incidents of the most striking and original kind were introduced at the wrong places, and this made them interesting no longer. So persuaded was I that the story only needed recasting to prove a real success that I devoted days, and even weeks, to going through the novel, and indicating where the transpositions should take place. Groome, however, had got so entirely sick of his novel before he had completed it that he refused absolutely to put another hour’s work into it; for, as he said, “the writing of it had already been a loss to the pantry.”