'Not me,' said Rufe; 'I'll not attend no class but Rosie's.'

'Oh, Rufe, for shame!' cried the girl. 'He does n't mean it, sir,' she pleaded apologetically. 'He does n't know any better. He's never been taught anything. He'd never even heard o' John the Baptist! But I think,' she added in a softer tone, 'he 'll try to learn to please me.'

'Well, well, my dear,' said Mr. Masterman kindly, 'you'll do your best, and I hope your efforts may be successful. You understood what she was explaining to you just now, did you not, my boy? About the wheat and the chaff. Come now, let us see if you understood your lesson. What does the wheat stand for?'

'I bain't a-goin' to be tayched by no one but Rosie,' insisted Rufe. 'I bain't a little bit of a schoolbwoy. The woods is free-I don't belong to your place.' His eyes were flickering. The Rector looked at him and nodded slowly.

'No indeed,' he said half to himself. 'You belong to another place and other times. You only want little horns among those green leaves, and a pair of goats' legs to make you complete.'

Rufe stared at him, and Rosie uttered a cry of protest.

'Oh, sir, he is n't as bad as that. He is n't a devil!'

"To be sure not, my dear,' agreed the Rector, shocked at the effect of his words. 'I had no intention of suggesting anything of the kind. I was really thinking that this young man seems to belong to the pagan world, the world which existed before St. John the Baptist's time, when men adored false gods and had all manner of strange beliefs. They be

'I know what fawns be,' interrupted Rufe, who was now interested. 'Young deer- that's what they be.'

'No, no,' said the Rector, 'I'm speaking of a different kind of faun. There are no such beings really. But you made me think of them. They were supposed to wear wreaths on their heads and had goats' legs and little horns. They were

But he checked himself. Really this was not the conversation for a Sunday afternoon. He must not allow the memories of the studies in which he had once taken much delight to lead him into this unprofitable comparison.

'You must leave off being a pagan, my lad,' he said, smiling down kindly at Rufe. 'You must lift up your mind to higher and better things, if only to be worthy of this good girl. As for you, Rosie, don't lose heart. Your faun may yet become a catechumen.'

He went away, laughing gently to himself, leaving Rosie puzzled and a little downcast, while Rufe made no pretense of concealing his relief and satisfaction.

"T is a good job we did get shut o' the wold chap!' he exclaimed. 'I did think he'd never go. I war n't a-goin' to have en a-brow-beatin' of I.'

He snatched off his wreath and tossed it aside.

'Let's go down to the river, maidie,' he said then, coaxingly. 'I'll get 'ee some forget-me-nots, an' us 'll find the little duck's nest.'

'Shan't us go on wi' the readin'?' asked Rosie, disappointed.

'No,' said Rufe. 'I've had lessons enough for to-day.'

'But you have n't learnt anything,' said Rosie, with a drooping lip.

''E-es I did. You did tell I as wheat stands for good folks.'

pocket, withdrawing it full of chaff which he slowly sifted into the embers with an expression of intense vindictiveness.

'What be doin'?' inquired Rosie, as he repeated the operation.

'I be a-burnin' up all the bad folks what I d' know,' he answered. 'Here's wold Abel what carried tales of I to your Dad. Here's the dalled

witch what turned I out last winter along o' me bein' behind wi' the money for my room. Here's'

'Rufe, you must n't-it's awful wrong to carry on like that," gasped Rosie, turning quite pale.

'Chaf d' stand for bad folks,' said Rufe doggedly. 'Bad folks ought to be burned. I be a-sarvin' of them as they do desarve.'

ANTHONY HOPE, once the satirist of the Honors List has now conferred upon that institution the distinction of his name. Henceforward he proceeds a knight. He should have paused. His own Lucius Vandean might have warned him; for does not that agreeable Private Secretary refuse to consider a K.C.B., on the ground that Sir Lucius is certain to be called O'Trigger? Sir Hawkins

should be John or Henry; Sir Anthony is plainly Absolute. What are we going to do about it? I think we had better stick to Anthony Hope.

It is now nearly three years since his name appeared among the ‘just outs.' That silence appeared to give his knighthood a sinister air. Surely we were not to understand that he had taken his title and left the lists! seemed early days for him to write. himself donatus jam rude, even though our more youthful gladiators of the pen have been playing havoc with

It

middle-aged reputations. He has lasted very much better than most of his contemporaries. To be particular would be unkind; but I could mention several 'best sellers' of the 'nineties whose very names are scarcely known to the impenetrably studious young ladies who now fill all the smoking carriages on the District Railway. Anthony Hope still counts, both in his lighter and in his more serious vein, and I am glad to learn that my gloomy suspicions of retirement are unfounded. The war has diverted his energies to other channels but a new book will, nevertheless, soon appear.

That pleasant essayist, Mr. Birrell, who to Ireland gave up what was meant for further volumes of Obiter Dicta, once sagely observed that there are some men whose names are inseparably associated with Movements, and others who are forever connected with Places. Anthony Hope has not,

as far as I know, ever begun or led a Movement, but he is certainly the discoverer of a Place; for whenever some petty principality struggles up into the brief publicity of the newspapers, its romantic possibilities are invariably called Ruritanian. Ruritania, in fact, filled a long-felt want. Not that there has been any lack of imaginary kingdoms. There is, for instance, the Grand Duchy of Gerolstein, and there are the various states appertaining to the empire that we may call Gilbertia. But the whole point of these delectable duchies is not that they are real, but that (in Jacobean phrase) they so delightfully are n't. The Monarch of such a state is simply bound to come into the market place, kiss the contadine and exchange back chat with a comic. Executioner. Without a kingdom of Pumpernickel or a duchy of PfennigHalbpfennig, comic opera could not exist. And there is matter for reflection in that circumstance. The comic spirit, with its daring discernment, has seen that there is nothing so sublime as man magnified, and nothing so ridiculous as the sublime; and that Kings and Queens and Duchesses and Lord High Executioners are therefore, in their essence, not creatures of terror, but merely figures of fun. Nothing exceeds like excess. A married monarch is not necessarily funny; a twice married monarch can live without exciting laughter; but it is dangerous to go farther. King Henry VIII liked to believe he was a terrible person; yet for all time he is the king whose name provokes a smile of contempt through his habit of acquiring and shedding wives. A sovereign may order a few executions and be terrible; but if he goes on ordering them he becomes delightful. Richard III (improved by Colley Cibber) is positively endeared

to us by his playful habit of ejaculating 'Off with his head.' Bluebeard, that exemplar of early frightfulness, who rivals Henry VIII as a domestic tyrant, is served up to children in the Christmas pantomimes. No tyrants are so excruciatingly tyrannicalas the kings of comic opera; and if by any chance the comic monarchy is limited, the very limitations are uproariously funny. For further evidence on the matter consult the works of the distinguished mathematician who wrote Alice in Wonderland. This saving laughter at the super-terrible is just humanity's way of revenging itself for our attempts to magnify a human office beyond humanity's poor reach. There's such divinity doth hedge a king that kings have become funnier than clowns.

But the Ruritanian royalty of Anthony Hope is not of this breed even though the moral of the Zenda story seems to be that a chance tourist can be a finer king than the genuine article, just as Richmond Roy has an Olympian majesty denied to most wearers of crowns. Ruritania is a province in the land of Romance, and

... the balm, the sceptre, and the ball, The sword, the mace, the crown imperial, The intertissued robe of gold and pearl, The farced title running 'fore the kingare here the properties of a great adventure. Thus Ruritania has nothing to do with Grünewald; for in that palpitating principality what concerns us is not royalty, but humanity, the appealing commonness of Otto and Seraphina, who find hearts beneath their robes, and fly to the depth of the woods with their love, while in the Mittwalden Rath-Haus they are being deposed and the Republic proclaimed. The Prisoner of Zenda offers us royalty as romance. The great adventure that made an English

gentleman a king puts on the likeness of fact to offer us an escape from fact. We are not required to believe it as a magistrate is expected to believe an affidavit, though even in affidavits, we are told, the truth will sometimes out. To ask of fiction whether it is true to life is like asking of wine whether it is good to eat. An artistic Pilate (not jesting) may ask in his turn, 'What is life?' and he need not stay for an answer, because there is n't one. Fiction must be true, not to life, but to its own life. We may not demand of fiction that it shall belong to any particular world; but we may insist that it shall be true to its own world. Think of Twelfth Night, that most exquisite of comedies, that perfection of poetic romance. How preposterously far are the facts from the routine of our suburban existence! How wildly untrue of the seacoast near Southend, and how exquisitely true of the seacoast near Illyria, Illyria being just one lovely name given to the land of Youth and Beauty, a land like that of Rostand's Romanesques where la scène se passe où l'on voudra, pourvu que les costumes soient jolis. The Prisoner of Zenda is far indeed from being a great book; but it is a rattling good story, with a most gallant English gentleman for its hero, and it is entirely true to its own world. The public has instinctively recognized this, and made it a type. To this act of collective criticism there is no reply. The verdict is final. Anthony Hope is to the big public the author of The Prisoner of Zenda. It not only made his name, it made his name stand for something definite; and that is half the battle of fame. It was published in 1894. I read it then, and I read it again yesterday with intense enjoyment.

Little need be said of the pre-Zenda books, except a remark that the in

ventor of an imaginary kingdom commenced author as the begetter of a South American Republic (A Man of Mark). I have a sneaking fondness for Phroso, that gay adventure in the Near East, and for The Indiscretion of the Duchess, published in the Zenda year, for though it certainly cannot be called weighty, it has an appealing blend of lightness and sincerity, of frivolity and something like pathos.

On the other hand, I never took kindly to Rupert of Hentzau. Although a sequel was expressly provided for in the original story, I think a sequel was a mistake. A logical sequel to a romance is likely to be as convincing as a romantic sequel to a proposition in Euclid. A romance does n't end. It just leaves off. In romance they all live happy ever afterwards. Ours not to reason why.

But there was another side to our author. He was not merely the patentee of a romantic kingdom somewhere in Central Europe, he was very much at home among the smart people of this instant and immediate world. In other words, besides writing The Prisoner of Zenda he wrote The Dolly Dialogues, and they bear the same date. That most unblushing of flirts Miss Dolly Foster, her complaisant husband Lord Mickleham, her imperturbable cicisbeo Mr. Carter, her implacable mother-in-law the Dowager Lady Mickleham, and her horsy friend Miss Nellie Phaeton, used to amuse us greatly in the columns of the Westminster Gazette, and proved just as engaging in the more permanent establishment of a volume. I turn to my copy (dated 1894), with its horribly bad illustrations by a young man named Arthur Rackham, and lo! it is like going back a century. The women with their compressed waists, their tightly befrilled necks, and their monstrous leg-of-mutton sleeves, seem