After reading Messrs. HUTCHINSON'S announcement that the critics describe Mr. F. BANCROFT as the most remarkable South African novelist now at work, I searched for a talent that was too successfully hidden for my finding. I was on the track of it two or three times, and once at least the scent was so hot that I thought the quarry was mine; but it got away. With _Dalliance and Strife_ the author completes a trilogy upon the Boer War, but here we are given too much flirtation and too little fighting. His liberality in the matter of heroines compensates me not at all for his niggard accounts of the war. That he himself should apparently take more interest in dalliance than in strife seems to indicate sheer perversity, for, when once he has ceased to toy with tennis-teas and trivialities, it is possible to respect the opinions of those admiring critics even if it is impossible to agree with them. The little fighting and the few whiffs of the veldt that we are given come as welcome reliefs to the rather stuffy atmosphere that Mr. BANCROFT has been at such pains to create. The British officer in his hours of dalliance is in his hands merely a figure of fun, but the militant Boer in field and camp is a faithful picture, so faithful, indeed, when contrasted with the other, that it leaves me astounded at such a combination of skill and futility. * * * * * _Germaine Damien_ was a little girl with considerable force of character. Having been told by a Socialist shoemaker that Squires were a mistake, she endeavoured to correct this error by driving a large knife into the first specimen of the race whom she met. This was _Miles Burnside_, a decent young man enough, and one obviously qualifying to be the hero of the story. So that when, quite early in its course, _Germaine_ caught him asleep and apparently left him dead with a dagger in his heart, I was for a little time considerably puzzled as to how Mrs. BAILLIE REYNOLDS was going to get on with her tale. However, I need not have worried. Of course _Miles_ was not dead; indeed the last six words of the book tell you that "His smile was good to see." And naturally he wouldn't have been smiling like that if he had not been enfolding the heroine in his strong arms. But before this happy moment we had a lot to get through. _Miles_ on recovery had told the properly apologetic _Germaine_ that she must never, never let anybody else know about the dagger business, and she said she wouldn't. Personally, if I had been _Germaine_, I should have done the same. Later in life, reflecting upon this injunction, and discovering that her grandfather had also killed a man, _Germaine_ got it into her head that the habit was inherited, and the idea worried her quite dreadfully. This, I suppose, is why her story is called _The Cost of A Promise_ (HODDER AND STOUGHTON). Eventually, however, when the thing had gone on long enough