In selecting his hero for _No Defence_ (HODDER AND STOUGHTON) from the mutineers at the Nore, it may be admitted that Sir GILBERT PARKER displayed a certain originality. With regard, to the _clou_ of his plot, however, I can hardly say so much. Melodramatic young lovers have (in fiction) gone to prison and worse rather than employ a defence involving distress to the ladies of their choice, from ages untold. _Dyck Calhoon_ did it when he was wrongly indicted for the killing of _Erris Boyne_, who was a traitor in the pay of France and incidentally the father of the heroine _Sheila_; though she knew nothing of this and would have been badly worried if the hazards of a defended murder case had brought it to light. Do you call the motive sufficient? No more do I. However, _Dyck_ goes to prison, emerging just in time to join the fleet and became a successful rebel under the Naval soviets established by RICHARD PARKER. Subsequently he takes his ship into action on the legitimate side, earns the quasi-pardon of exile on parole in Jamaica, finds a fortune of Spanish treasure, quells a black rising, is cleared of the murder charge (by the wholly preposterous arrival in the island of the now aged lady who had really done the deed--exactly like the _finale_ of a GILBERT and Sullivan opera) and marries the heroine. A breathless plot, by which, however, my own pulse remained unquickened. To be brutally frank, indeed, the telling seemed to me wholly lacking in precisely the qualities of dash and crescendo required to carry off such a tale. Costume romance that halts and looks backward soon loses my following. * * * * * [Illustration: _LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI._] * * * * *