8vo. vii, [1] 11-290pp. Original publisher's yellow cloth boards lettered red. Inscribed by Buchan on the FFEP 'Isabel Portman from John Buchan. This specimen of his later and worse manner', dated 1921. Boards a little rubbed and marked, spine slightly sunned. Internally bright and clean save light foxing to pastedowns. Loosely inserted in an invoice for both this and several other Buchan titles from Charles Rare Books, Buntingford, dated 1959.

The first American edition of Buchan's mid-career offering of interlinked short stories, following a band of gold from the Vikings to Abraham Lincoln.

John Buchan (1875-1940) was a Scottish novelist, historian, and Unionist politician, best remembered for his subterfuge thriller The Thirty-Nine Steps (1915), and serving as Governor General of Canada from 1935 to his death after a fall in 1940.