Inevitably you will find a sad significance in the title of _Harvest_ (COLLINS), the last story, I suppose, that we shall have from the pen of Mrs. HUMPHREY WARD. It is a quite simple tale, very simply told, and of worth less for its inherent drama than for the admirable picture it gives of rural England in the last greatest days of the Great War. How quick was the writer's sympathy with every phase of the national ordeal is proved again by a score of vivid passages in which the fortunes of her characters are dated by the tremendous events that form their background. The story itself is of two women in partnership on a Midland farm, one of whom, the senior, has in her past certain secret episodes which, as is the way of such things, return to find her out and bring her happiness to ruin. The character of this _Janet_ is well and vigorously drawn, though there is perhaps little in her personality as shown here to make understandable the passion of her past. All the details of life on the land in the autumn of 1918 are given with a skill that brings into the book not only the scent of the wheat-field but the stress, emotional and economic, of those unforgettable months. Because it is all so typically English one may call it a true consummation of the work of one who loved England well. In Mrs. WARD'S death the world of letters mourns the loss of a writer whose talent was ever ungrudgingly at the service of her country. She leaves a gap that it will be hard to fill. * * * * *