1. Comment on the appropriateness of the direct opening. Is such a method more appropriate to one type of story than another?
2. Describe the steps by which the author prepares for, without explaining, his climax.
3. How does the author focus attention, not on the murderer and criminal, but on the individual problem of Robbins? Would you have preferred a more detailed explanation of the cause of the crime?
4. Why is Emerson introduced?
5. Is the enormity of the injury he is doing ever clear to Robbins?
6. What other stories are included, but left untold, in this one?
7. What, to you, is the most significant thing in the author’s handling of the narrative? Why would such a story not lend itself to scenic production?
WHAT MR. GREY SAID
Margaret Prescott Montague, living among the West Virginia mountains, has written many successful stories of the Hill people whom she knows so well.