CONTENTS
PREFATORY NOTE
I. THE EVENTS OF THIRTY YEARS
II. THE EVENTS OF A FORTNIGHT
III. THE EVENTS OF EIGHT DAYS
IV. THE EVENTS OF ONE DAY
V. THE EVENTS OF ONE DAY
VI. THE EVENTS OF TWELVE HOURS
VII. THE EVENTS OF EIGHTEEN DAYS
VIII. THE EVENTS OF EIGHTEEN DAYS
IX. THE EVENTS OF TEN WEEKS
X. THE EVENTS OF A DAY AND NIGHT
XI. THE EVENTS OF FIVE DAYS
XII. THE EVENTS OF TEN MONTHS
XIII. THE EVENTS OF ONE DAY
XIV. THE EVENTS OF FIVE WEEKS
XV. THE EVENTS OF THREE WEEKS
XVI. THE EVENTS OF ONE WEEK
XVII. THE EVENTS OF ONE DAY
XVIII. THE EVENTS OF THREE DAYS
XIX. THE EVENTS OF A DAY AND NIGHT
XX. THE EVENTS OF THREE HOURS
XXI. THE EVENTS OF EIGHTEEN HOURS
SEQUEL
The following story, the first published by the author, was written nineteen years ago, at a time when he was feeling his way to a method. The principles observed in its composition are, no doubt, too exclusively those in which mystery, entanglement, surprise, and moral obliquity are depended on for exciting interest; but some of the scenes, and at least one of the characters, have been deemed not unworthy of a little longer preservation; and as they could hardly be reproduced in a fragmentary form the novel is reissued complete—the more readily that it has for some considerable time been reprinted and widely circulated in America. January 1889.
To the foregoing note I have only to add that, in the present edition of ‘Desperate Remedies,’ some Wessex towns and other places that are common to the scenes of several of these stories have been called for the first time by the names under which they appear elsewhere, for the satisfaction of any reader who may care for consistency in such matters.
This is the only material change; for, as it happened that certain characteristics which provoked most discussion in my latest story were present in thi