TO MY BROTHER
JOHN REDPATH DOUGALL
THIS BOOK IS INSCRIBED
WITH REVERENCE AND AFFECTION

PREFACE.


One episode of this story may need a word of explanation. It is reported
that while the "Millerite" or Adventist excitement of 1843 was agitating
certain parts of North America, in one place at least a little band of
white-robed people ascended a hill in sure expectation of the Second
Advent, and patiently returned to be the laughing stock of their
neighbours. This tradition, as I heard it in my childhood, was repeated
as if it embodied nothing but eccentricity and absurdity, yet it
naturally struck a child's mind with peculiar feelings of awe and
pathos. Such an event appeared picturesque matter for a story. It was
not easy to deal with; for in setting it, as was necessary, in close
relation to the gain-getting, marrying and giving in marriage, of the
people among whom it might occur, it was difficult to avoid either
giving it a poetic emphasis which it would not appear to have in reality
or degrading it by that superficial truth often called realism, which
belittles men. Any unworthiness in the working out of the incident is
due, not so much to lack of dignity in the subject, or to lack of
material, as to the limitations of the writer's capacity.