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.