idea of the story were taken from Merriman's earliest literary venture,
the beginning of a novel--there were only a few chapters of it--which
he had written before "Young Mistley," and which he had discarded,
dissatisfied.

The novel "Dross" was produced in America in 1899, having appeared
serially in this country in a well-known newspaper. Written during a
period of ill-health, Merriman thought it beneath his best work, and,
true to that principle which ruled his life as an author, to give to the
public so far as he could of that best, and of that best only, he
declined (of course to his own monetary disadvantage) to permit its
publication in England in book form.

Its _mise-en-scene_ is France and Suffolk; its period the Second
Empire--the period of "The Last Hope." Napoleon III., a character by
whom Merriman was always peculiarly attracted, shadows it: in it appears
John Turner, the English banker of Paris, of "The Last Hope"; an
admirable and amusing sketch of a young Frenchman; and an excellent
description of the magnificent scenery about Saint Martin Lantosque, in
the Maritime Alps.

For the benefit of "The Isle of Unrest," his next book, Merriman had
travelled through Corsica--not the Corsica of fashionable hotels and
health-resorts, but the wild and unknown parts of that lawless and
magnificent island. For "The Velvet Glove" he visited Pampeluna,
Saragossa, and Lerida. The country of "The Vultures"--Warsaw and its
neighbourhood--he saw in company with his friend, Mr. Stanley Weyman.
The pleasure of another trip, the one he took in western
France--Angouleme, Cognac, and the country of the Charente--for the
scenery of "The Last Hope," was also doubled by Mr. Weyman's presence.