"In daydreams Veronica Wentworth liked to see herself as a heroine, but in reral life her vivid imagination only made her more easily frightened than other people. So it was unfortunate that she was the one who crashed through the hillside into the hideout scooped out long ago under the turf of Troy Town Hill. Yet this incident, unnerving in itself, led to her meeting Mrs. King, the old woman living alone on the Common, and it was because of Mrs King that Veronica, in the nightwatch crisis, was able to act in a way that really had something heroic about it" --Inside front dust jacket.