The author thinks it well to apprise the reader that the historical
outline of this story is largely taken from the admirable narrative of
Judge Taneyhill in the _Ohio Valley Series_, Robert Clarke Co.,
Cincinnati. The details are often invented, and the characters are all
invented as to their psychological evolution, though some are based upon
those of real persons easily identifiable in that narrative. The drama is
that of the actual events in its main development; but the vital
incidents, or the vital uses of them, are the author's. At times he has
enlarged them; at times he has paraphrased the accounts of the witnesses;
in one instance he has frankly reproduced the words of the imposter as
reported by one who heard Dylks's last address in the Temple at
Leatherwood and as given in the Taneyhill narrative. Otherwise the story
is effectively fiction.