Shilling

THE SPLENDID SHILLING--Idwal Jones--Doubleday, Page ($2). "Happy the man who, devoid of cares and strife, in silken or in leathern purse retains the splendid shilling." So lied the old Welsh proverb. The girl, Danzel, wore the crusted coin--rapt from the empty ribs of a warrior--until there was a green stain on her breast. She made to give it to Guy Puncheon as he left Wales to let his half-gypsy blood race free and find their fortune. But it dropped between them, which may have been the omen. Guy found it, pouched it in silk against his travels, had it when he came back for Danzel--but she was gone with her father, Shadrach, to California of the '50s. Happy the man, indeed! It took a staunch lad to go that journey, but Guy went it, by Panama. For months he roamed the roaring, gold-dusted country asking the cream and scum of 40 nations, not for metal or favors, but for word of her. No woman stayed him though he succored one, a young Italienne with a snakeskin headband, quite mad with working her blind father's claim.

A Welsh trouble is on this story; a gypsy wandering and a sad chivalry. He found Danzel again--but he flung away the shilling, into a California river under the broad moon. It was a strange token for such a book, through which the pulses of many lives smite vividly, stirred by a magnificent raconteur, who can make of his pen a witch's twig, a sword, a paint brush. A Welshman, Author Jones is dramatic critic of the San Francisco Examiner. This is his first novel.