BY
LOUISE IMOGEN GUINEY

BOSTON
COPELAND AND DAY
M DCCC XCV

[Pg ii]COPYRIGHT BY COPELAND AND DAY 1895

[Pg iii]TO CLARENCE J. BLAKE AND FRANCES
H. BLAKE, A BOOK FINISHED ON THEIR
OWN WILD ACRES OF THE MAINE COAST.

October, 1894.

[Pg iv]

The contents of this book have, hitherto,never been printed nor published.One chapter among them, The Provider,is based very literally on a tragic thingwhich happened, some years ago, in Dublin,and which, figuring as a cable despatchof some ten lines in a Boston dailynewspaper, fell under my eye, to be remembered,and afterwards cast into itspresent form. In the September (1895)number of Harpers' Magazine, little FatherTime and his adopted brother, inHearts Insurgent, end their innocent livesfrom Hughey's strange motive, thoughnot in his manner. It is perhaps worthwhile to state that my story was finishedand laid by, prior to the appearance ofthe novel in its serial form, lest I shouldseem fain to melt my waxen wings in the[Pg vi]fire of the Wessex sun. It is possiblethat the actual incident had come to Mr.Hardy's notice also, and with a keen andpitiful interest for so expert a student ofhuman nature. A curious circumstancein his relation of it is that the elder child,in order that there may be more room ina hard world for the persons he loves, disposesnot only of himself, but presumablyof the younger child as well; and in theoriginal version of my story Hugheyjumped into the river with his sisterNora in his arms. But a friend of mine,who read the manuscript in 1894, awriter of great insight whose opinion Ivalue in the extreme, so wrought with meto change the cruel ending, that I did sothen and there, after some argument, andsent the boy of "long, long thoughts"uncompanied to his fate. The point ofall this is, of course, that I now perceivemy small invention had dared, unconsciously,to keep yet closer pace thanwould appear with Mr. Hardy's; for thesuicide of real life was the suicide of onechild alone.

The other three sketches here are moreimaginative; and the first of them, which[Pg vii]bears the earliest date, was, from end toend, a dream, and is somewhat reluctantlyincluded. They stand for apprentice-workin fiction, and are my onlyattempts of that kind.

L. I. G.

London, September 6th, 1895.

[Pg viii]