To Thomas Arthur Nelson
(Lothian and Border Horse)
My Dear Tommy,
You and I have long cherished an affection for that
elemental type of tale which Americans call the 'dime novel' and which we know
as the 'shocker'--the romance where the incidents defy the probabilities, and
march just inside the borders of the possible. During an illness last winter I
exhausted my store of those aids to cheerfulness, and was driven to write one
for myself. This little volume is the result, and I should like to put your name
on it in memory of our long friendship, in the days when the wildest fictions
are so much less improbable than the facts.
J.B.
