_Faith Tresilion_ (WARD, LOCK) is a book of brave and of some diabolical deeds, but as Mr. EDEN PHILLPOTTS sees to it that his murderers and wreckers get their due he leaves me with the hopeful feeling that what happened to super-criminals a hundred years or so ago will also be their fate in this year of grace. _Faith_ is the type of heroine with whom readers of this amazingly industrious author are familiar--a fearless girl who does a man's work without for a moment becoming unsexed. She was in a difficult position enough, for her brother was a smuggler and she was in love, head to heels, with the local gangster. There are other complications, but this is the chief one, and it is worked out in Mr. _Phillpotts_' best West-country manner. I accept _Faith_ and salute her, but it is before her mother that I completely bow the knee. Mrs. _Tresilion_ was paralysed up to her waist, which was just as well, for if her activities had not been limited she would have swamped the whole book. As it was she lay in bed, drank gin, directed various operations with her eye fixed rather upon this world than the next, and told her visitors precisely what she thought of them. I am thankful not to have met this devastating lady in the flesh, because to be called "a hookery-snidy, trundle-trailed king-crab," and then told to kiss her, would have been more than I could bear. * * * * * I feel that Miss CONSTANCE HOLME will be the first to agree with me on reflection that as a beginning of a chapter in _The Old Road from Spain_ (MILLS) the following will not do: "The long bright day idled interminably to its tryst with night. Luis ate his lonely meals in the silent room," etc. It illustrates a defect of her rather over-intense method. She would readily forgive me this stricture if she could know the eagerness with which I read her picturesque pages to find out exactly what was the matter with the _Huddlestons_ of Thorn. From a Spanish ancestor, who had been wrecked with the Armada, they had inherited a CURSE. It was a very original curse, and I dare not deprive you of the pleasure of finding out what it was for yourself. Miss HOLME puts in her background of mystery with skilful touches and handles her characterisation with a good deal more subtlety than your mere mystery-monger can command. She observes both men and things with affection, writes of them with imagination. _Rowly Huddleston_, the committee-ridden squire of Thorn, looks like a careful portrait from life, and probably somebody also sat for that faithful soul, _Crane_, the butler. A book to be commended. Its defects are the defects of exuberance, the sort one only begins to notice after one has said, "Hello! this is pretty good!" * * * * *