Of this work Conan Doyle wrote, "I take a New Englander, a Puritan, as one type of the seventeenth century, and a New Yorker, the woodman, as another, and I precipitate these two into the court of Louis XIV, and mix them up in the European history of that time - very much as Scott threw Quentin Durward, the young Scotchman, into the French court. I have taken a lot of pains to make these two types exact studies. Then I shift the scene back to America. It will be something new in the way of an American historical novel. You see it will be the story of the two continents. The woodman will use the phrases of the wood, and the New Englander is rather Biblical."