'The Crucial Moment' is a novel by Charles Egbert Craddock, the pen name of Mary Noailles Murfree, who often writes stories featuring characters in the Appalachian region. For this particular novel, the character central to the story is Walter Hoxer, who though he had large experience in levee-building, was new to the position of a contractor, having graduated into it, so to speak, from the station of foreman of a construction-gang of Irishmen. He had hoped for further employ in this neighborhood, in building private levees that, in addition to the main levees along the banks of the Mississippi, would aid riparian protection by turning off overflow from surcharged bayous and encroaching lakes in the interior. But, unluckily, the employer of the first enterprise he had essayed on his own responsibility had declared that he had deviated from the line of survey, usually essential to the validity of the construction, thereby much shortening the work; and had made this statement at Winfield's store.