Produced by Les Bowler DESPERATE REMEDIES By Thomas Hardy 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 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. I. THE EVENTS OF THIRTY YEARS 1. DECEMBER AND JANUARY, 1835-36 In the long and intricately inwrought chain of circumstance which renders worthy of record some experiences of Cytherea Graye, Edward Springrove, and others, the first event directly influencing the issue was a Christmas visit. In the above-mentioned year, 1835, Ambrose Graye, a young architect who had just begun the practice of his profession in the midland town of Hocbridge, to the north of Christminster, went to London to spend the Christmas holidays with a friend who lived in Bloomsbury. They had gone up to Cambridge in the same year, and, after graduating together, Huntway, the friend, had taken orders.