For the name on the book was Philemon R.Ward, and the town after his name, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Every man and woman and most of the children in Sycamore Ridge knew who Philemon Ward was.

He had been driven out of Georgia in '58 for editing an abolition newspaper; he had been mobbed in Ohio for delivering abolition lectures; he had been led out of Missouri with a rope around his neck, and a reward was on his head in a half-dozen Southern states for inciting slaves to rebellion.

His picture had been in _Harper's Weekly_ as a General Passenger Agent of the Underground Railway.

Naturally to Sycamore Ridge, where more than one night the town had sat up all night waiting for the stage to bring the _New York Tribune_, Philemon R.Ward was a hero, and his presence in the town was an event.