PREFACE THOSE who read this romance for the sake of what history it may contain will find the histories from which I have helped myself more profitable. Those antiquarians who hunt their hobbies through books had best drop the trail of this book at the preface, for they will draw but a Llanlr covert in these pages. Better for the antiquarian that he seek the mansion of Sir William Johnson, which is still standing in Johnstown, NCW York, and see with his own eyes the hatchetscars in the solid mahogany banisters where Thnyendanegea hacked out polished chips. It would doubtless prove more profitable for the antiquarian to thumb those hatchet-marks than these pages. But there be some simple folk who read romance for its own useless sake.....