FIRST NOVELS 103 



gets into the labyrinth of the Baskette rase, nnd, finally, 

 the Waldrons are shown to have a claim. Aymer and 

 Violet marry, and the borongh of Stirmingham allows 

 them £8,000 a year. Into this labyrinth it is unnecessary 

 to go, though it was, in Jefferies' opinion, the principal 

 attraction of his three volumes. 



Lady Lechester's character reveals some of Jefferies' 

 interests at this time. Thus, she suddenly springs up 

 from her luncheon-table, and says she must go to meet 

 her lover, a soldier. She goes on talking as if to some- 

 one with her, and is heard saying : ' Walter, what does 

 that red spot on your forehead mean ? Are you angry ?' 

 A month later she hears of his death from a bullet in 

 the forehead. Afterwards, near where she had her 

 vision of Walter, she used to meet ' something,' beautiful 

 and ' half human, half divine,' a supernatural genius of 

 the place. 



There is a gipsy in the book who wanders about playing 

 ' weird music ' on a whistle. He has large ears, and seems 

 a careless sketch of a kind of Pan. 



One character takes us back to Jefferies' earliest fiction, 

 for he has a ' private cremation stove.' Except Aymer 

 and Violet, her father and Lady Lechester, the characters 

 are out of his reach ; and the length and complexity of the 

 tale are merely obstacles, and not conquerable kingdoms, 

 to his heroic persistency. Yet the best things in the book 

 are the best things he has yet done, or the most promising, 

 since they foretell the outdoor and the autobiographical 

 elements in the work of his maturity. 



In the year after the appearance of ' World's End ' he 

 offered a version of ' The Dewy Morn ' to a publisher, but 

 that book as it was in 1884 belongs to a later period. 

 The last of the early novels is ' Greene Feme Farm,' 

 published as a serial in Time of the year 187Q, and in a 

 single volume in 1880. Its characters are May Fisher 

 and Margaret Estcourt ; Valentine Browne and Geoffrey 

 Newton, friends and rival lovers of Margaret ; the Rev. 

 Felix St. Bees, May's lover ; and old Andrew Fisher, a 



