1913. Canadian clergyman turned writer, Basil King (author of The Inner Shrine) produced his first noteworthy novel at the age of 50. He believed in spiritualism and claimed that a spirit personality guided his writing. The book begins: An incident like that of the missionary box could not but fix in Charlie Grace's mind the approximate date of his first conscious wish to be a clergyman. Thinking it over in after life, he reckoned that it must have been in 1874, when he was five years old. While other childish happenings grew dim to incoherence this one stood out clearly. He came, indeed, to take it as the starting-point of his personal activity, referring back to it as the beginning of things rather than to his birth. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.