me see on which side the scale inclines. All I can discern is, that it will, to a dead certainty, turn one way or the other on the day when she passes Noel Vanstone’s doors in disguise. I am not prepared to criticise Dickens’s plot as Mr. Lang has done. If Wilkie Collins made an admirable heroine of Magdalen Vanstone disguising herself variously, why should not Dickens succeed in making a character as wonderful and more attractive of Helena Landless? There is nothing to be condemned in the idea itself. It has been used by masters, and used successfully. There would have been nothing to condemn, I believe, in Dickens’s way of working it out if he had lived to complete his book. The comparison with Guy Boothby is singularly inept. OBJECTIONS The objections that have been made to the Datchery-Helena theory turn mainly on the supposed disgracefulness of Dickens deceiving his readers as he did, and working out a melodramatic idea. These objections might have been, and, I believe, would have been, scattered to the winds by the complete story. The most serious objection to the identification of Datchery as Helena is the confusion in the chronology. This is admirably stated by Dr. Jackson, who examines in a masterly way the arrangement of the chapters. He comes to the conclusion that chapter xviii. has been introduced prematurely. It ought to have followed chapter xxii. If Dickens had lived to issue the fifth and sixth monthly instalments, he would have placed our chapter xviii. without the alteration of a single word after chapter xxii., next before chapter xxiii. We know that Dickens told his sister-in-law that he was afraid the Datchery assumption in the fifth number was premature. Dr. Jackson gives us a full and valuable examination of the manuscript so far as its arrangement is concerned. I have tested his statements in every point, and can only confirm them. To Dr. Jackson’s chapter ix., ‘The Manuscript,’ I refer the reader. There are other objections. In particular, some are troubled by Datchery’s masculine ways. They ask how Helena, fresh from Ceylon, should have known the old tavern way of keeping scores. There is not much in this. In fact, these scores, which could have served no purpose, seem to me the natural expression of a buoyant girl rejoicing in her achievements. A cool-headed, middle-aged detective would never have expressed himself in such a way. Why should not Helena have known about tavern scoring? She was accustomed to walk with her brother Neville, and in the course of their walks they may very likely have visited a tavern now and then. We read of Neville finding his way to a tavern when he walked away that dark night. In _Phineas Finn_, at the end of chapter lxxi., Trollope, reporting the conversation of two high-born ladies, Lady Laura Kennedy and Miss Violet Effingham, has this: