the "atmosphere" of a small cathedral town. Here there is a lack
of softness and delicacy of treatment: on the other hand, the
opium den is studied from the life.

On the whole, Dickens himself was perhaps most interested in his
plot, his secret, his surprises, his game of hide and seek with the
reader. He threw himself into the sport with zest: he spoke to
his sister-in-law, Miss Hogarth, about his fear that he had not
sufficiently concealed his tracks in the latest numbers. Yet, when
he died in June, 1870, leaving three completed numbers still
unpublished, he left his secret as a puzzle to the curious. Many
efforts have been made to decipher his purpose, especially his
intentions as to the hero. Was Edwin Drood killed, or did he
escape?

By a coincidence, in September, 1869, Dickens was working over the
late Lord Lytton's tale for All The Year Round, "The Disappearance
of John Ackland," for the purpose of mystifying the reader as to
whether Ackland was alive or dead. But he was conspicuously
defunct! (All the Year Round, September-October, 1869.)

The most careful of the attempts at a reply about Edwin, a study
based on deep knowledge of Dickens, is "Watched by the Dead," by
the late ingenious Mr. R. A. Proctor (1887). This book, to which I
owe much aid, is now out of print. In 1905, Mr. Cuming Walters
revived "the auld mysterie," in his "Clues to Dickens's Edwin
Drood" (Chapman & Hall and Heywood, Manchester). From the solution
of Mr. Walters I am obliged to dissent. Of Mr. Proctor's theory I
offer some necessary corrections, and I hope that I have unravelled
some skeins which Mr. Proctor left in a state of tangle. As one