The condensed biographical sketches which follow, of such persons as
figure principally in the story, will help to show to those who wish to
read it intelligently, how much of it is genuine history. They will see
that the tale is mainly constructed on a succession of hypotheses, but
that every hypothesis rests on a substratum of fact, however slender,
and in many cases on careful weighing and comparison of a number of
facts together. Some of these conjectures are perhaps the only ones
which will fully and satisfactorily account for the sequence of events.
For convenience of reference, the names are arranged in alphabetical
order.