14th August, 1900.




INTRODUCTION

The story with which this book opens, 'The Lane That Had No Turning',
gives the title to a collection which has a large share in whatever
importance my work may possess. Cotemporaneous with the Pierre series,
which deal with the Far West and the Far North, I began in the
'Illustrated London News', at the request of the then editor, Mr. Clement
K. Shorter, a series of French Canadian sketches of which the first was
'The Tragic Comedy of Annette'. It was followed by 'The Marriage of the
Miller, The House with the Tall Porch, The Absurd Romance of P'tite
Louison, and The Woodsman's Story of the Great White Chief'. They were
begun and finished in the autumn of 1892 in lodgings which I had taken on
Hampstead Heath. Each--for they were all very short--was written at a
sitting, and all had their origin in true stories which had been told me
in the heart of Quebec itself. They were all beautifully illustrated in
the Illustrated London News, and in their almost monosyllabic narrative,
and their almost domestic simplicity, they were in marked contrast to the
more strenuous episodes of the Pierre series. They were indeed in
keeping with the happily simple and uncomplicated life of French Canada
as I knew it then; and I had perhaps greater joy in writing them and the
purely French Canadian stories that followed them, such as 'Parpon the
Dwarf, A Worker in Stone, The Little Bell of Honour, and The Prisoner',
than in almost anything else I have written, except perhaps 'The Right of
Way and Valmond', so far as Canada is concerned.