JEFF BRIGGS'S LOVE STORY. BY BRET HARTE. THE TWINS OF TABLE MOUNTAIN. By BRET HARTE. MRS. GAINSBOROUGH'S JULIAN HAWTHORNE. DIAMONDS. By PRETTY POLLY PEMBERTON. By the Author of "That Lass o' Lowrie's." LINDSAY'S LUCK. By the Author of "That Lass o' Lowrie's." KATHLEEN MAVOURNEEN. By the Author of "That Lass o' Lowrie's." TROOPING WITH CROWS. By Mrs. PIRKIS. THE PROFESSOR'S WIFE. By LEONARD GRAHAM. A DOUBLE BOND. By LINDA VILLARI. CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY. ESTHER'S I. GLOVE. JUST a week had passed since old Joshua Perrin, of Perrin's Farm, had joined the score or so of Joshua and Jabez Perrins who had held Perrin's Farm since mortal memory first found its way into those parts of England. One may even still find such corners of counties, where the Christian name and surname of the tenant-farmer seem graven into the earth by the ploughshare before the forefathers of the landlord had ever been heard of. The Perrins of Perrin's Farm were more deeply rooted in the soil than the timber which they never thought of felling. Not one had ever crossed the narrowest sea, and a journey to "Lunnon Town," as they called it, was an event never to be forgotten in the family history. They married and gave in marriage with their neighbours on that side of Wavenham; and all who were not called Jabez were named Joshua, all not named Joshua were called Jabez, unless they were girls, and then the choice mostly ran between Rebecca and Martha. They were not scientific agriculturists, but the rule of the family thumb made them singularly lucky farmers; and, in spite of Virgil, they were by no means ignorant of their own good fortune. Finally, they were a narrow-skulled, stiff-necked, slow-tongued, close-handed, and hardfisted race, whose law of life was made of a crabbed, grinding sort of honesty, a savage sort of prudery, |