In this story, "The Summit House Mystery," Miss Dougall has illustrated so well the possibilities of combining an exciting story with the charm of real literary art, that it must be considered as a model for a better school of popular fiction. In substance and in form it is unusually satisfying. The mystery with which it deals is so impenetrable as to baffle the cleverest reader until the very sentence in which, literally in a flash of light, the secret is revealed; yet from the beginning the story progresses steadily, logically, and without straining or melodramatic claptrap, to the inevitable solution. It is not, in the ordinary sense, a detective story, altho the two elements of concealment and search are present. It is not a "love story," but love, of the noblest order, supplies the cause and the support of the terrible mystery throughout the book. It is, as one has aptly said, a story of mystery "into which a soul has been infused." The rare distinction of its style and the beauty of its language place it far above stories of its class. A wonderful setting is given, high up on the summit of Deer Mountain, in Georgia, and the story seems to take on a quiet dignity, as well as a deeper atmosphere of mystery, from the lofty solitude. Seldom have the beauties of the mountains, "in all their varying moods of cloud, and mist, and glorious night," been painted in truer colors. "The Summit House Mystery" must inevitably set a higher standard for such novels, and the public will thus gain more than this one good story if it shall have, as it deserves, an immense popular success.
CONTENTS
| CHAP. | PAGE | |
| I. | A Hut in the Precipice | [9] |
| II. | The Unwelcome Guest | [17] |
| III. | A Strange Dismissal | [24] |
| IV. | The Hostess Jailer | [28] |
| V. | The Northern Ladies | [33] |
| VI. | Events on Deer Mountain | [39] |
| VII. | The Godson Possibility | [45] |
| VIII. | The Wordless Letters | [56] |
| IX. | The Spectre in the Forest | [67] |
| X. | A Skeleton in the Fire | [75] |
| XI. | The Mysterious 'Dolphus | [82] |
| XII. | The Secret of the Oak | [88] |
| XIII. | A Sob in the Dark | [98] |
| XIV. | The Going Out of Eve | [104] |
| XV. | The Question of Guilt | [109] |
| XVI. | A Call for Help | [119] |
| XVII. | Hermione's Advocate | [125] |
| XVIII. | A Startling Disclosure | [132] |
| XIX. | Tangled in the Coil | [140] |
| XX. | The Terrible Confession | [146] |
| XXI. | Opening the Past | [153] |
| XXII. | The Earthly Purgatory | [169] |
| XXIII. | What 'Dolphus Knows | [180] |
| XXIV. | The Woman with a Secret | [189] |
| XXV. | Lost in the Maze | [205] |
| XXVI. | A Tortured Conscience | [217] |
| XXVII. | A Hound on the Scent | [229] |
| XXVIII. | Probing a Deep Wound | [238] |
| XXIX. | Forged Letters | [251] |
| XXX. | The Vision in the Hut | [266] |
| XXXI. | A Flash of Light | [289] |
| XXXII. | What a Terrier Found | [296] |
| XXXIII. | The Restoration | [307] |
| XXXIV. | All That Happened | [312] |
| XXXV. | Readjustments | [323] |