Celia Grant, a lady fallen on hard times, lives in a grotty apartment building in London, supporting herself financially. One day she happens upon the young man in the adjoining room contemplating suicide, and saves his life, which he never forgets: 'I did not know her name until you told me just now; I saw her for only a few minutes; those few minutes, and her angelic goodness, changed the whole current of my life.'

Alice Brown (December 5, 1857 - June 21, 1948) was an American novelist, poet and playwright, best known as a writer of local color stories. She was born in Hampton Falls, New Hampshire and graduated from Robinson Seminary in Exeter in 1876. She later worked as a school teacher for five years, but moved to Boston to write full-time in 1884. She first worked at the Christian Register and then, starting in 1885, the Youth's Companion. She was a prolific author for many years, but her popularity waned after the turn of the 20th century. She produced a book a year until she stopped writing in 1935.

Ridgwell Cullum (13 August 1867 - 3 November 1943) was a British writer who wrote a large number of adventure novels over more than 30 years, usually set in sparsely populated regions of the United States or Canada. He left home aged 17 to join a gold rush in the Transvaal in South Africa, where he became involved in the conflict between British and Boer settlers; he travelled to the scene of another gold rush in Yukon in north-west Canada; he spent a few years cattle-ranching in Montana, USA. His first novel The Devil's Keg, set in Alberta, Canada, was published in 1903. After its success he settled in Britain and became a full-time writer. Several of his novels were made into films.