APPENDIX: FRAGMENT OF "THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD"
When Forster was just finishing his biography of Dickens, he found amongthe leaves of one of the novelist's other manuscripts certain loose slipsin his writing, "on paper only half the size of that used for the tale,so cramped, interlined, and blotted as to be nearly illegible." Theseproved, upon examination, to contain a suggested chapter for _EdwinDrood_, in which Sapsea, the auctioneer, appears as the principal figure,surrounded by a group of characters new to the story. That chapter,being among the last things Dickens wrote, seems to contain so much ofinterest that it may be well to reprint it here.--ED.