PREFATORY NOTE

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 this my first--published in 1871, when there was no
French name for them it has seemed best to let them stand unaltered.

T.H.
February 1896.