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I had thought to close up the cycle of my stories of life in the Mississippi Valley with "Roxy" which was published in 1878. But when I undertook by request of the editor to write a short story for "The Century Magazine," and to found it on a legendary account of one of President Lincoln's trials, the theme grew on my hands until the present novel was the result. It was written mostly at Nervi, near Genoa, where I could not by any possibility have verified the story I had received about 1867 from one of Lincoln's old neighbors. To have investigated the accuracy of my version of the anecdote would have been, indeed, to fly in the face and eyes of providence, for popular tradition is itself an artist rough-hewing a story to the novelist's hands. During the appearance of this novel in serial form I have received many letters from persons acquainted in one way or another with the actors and sufferers in the events, of which these here related are the ideal counterparts. Some of these letters contain information or relate incidents of so much interest that I have it in mind to insert them in an appendix to some later edition of this book.

EDWARD EGGLESTON.

Joshua's Rock, Lake George, 1888.

This Book is respectfully inscribed to the Hon. Jonathan Chace, United States Senator from Rhode Island; the Hon. Joseph Hawley, United States Senator from Connecticut; the Hon. W. C. P. Breckenridge, Representative from Kentucky; and the Hon. Patrick A. Collins, Representative from Massachusetts, who have recently introduced or had charge of International Copyright Bills, and to those Members of both Houses of Congress who have coöperated with them in the effort to put down literary buccaneering.

E. E.

To my friend, Mabel Cooke,

I Dedicate the Ideals of

which these Illustrations

are the Faint and Awkward

Shadows.

The Illustrator.